Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

Awesome, life changing if you've been suffering in crazy ways and not know what's up. Childhood abuse over a long time with no way out causes your brain to do its very best to do what it can do you will survive but it pays a price and you have no clue except the pain and struggle you live with. Therapists don't help because it's too difficult and complex to understand and it requires them to not use the regular talk therapy that's been used since the beginning. This work has crossed over into a very helpful realm that is like watching someone label my life's journey with cause and effect explanations that I absolutely recognize as truth. What a relief.

I’m so sorry if you went through any trauma. This book is so essential for any trauma you’ve been through. It gives you an understanding. You see that you’re normal and good. It gives you realistic hope. You can heal , no matter how deep you’ve been hurt. I wish you all a complete and deep healing, the world needs you, and the world needs more people like you!!

As a trauma survivor, and someone in recovery from DID, this book is proving to be so powerful for me. I have read very widely on trauma and have learned a little bit from many authors; but this book goes so much further because Fisher brings together understandings from neuroscience; together with learnings of Internal Family Systems Therapy, the Structural Dissociation model and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, in a way that it's all so applicable to my daily life. Written in a very easy to read style, Fisher walks her talk making sure it's as accessible to trauma survivors as therapists, ensuring that any technical concepts are explained in easy to understand language. It's written with such compassion that Fisher's compassion can't help but rub off on us as we read!This book makes sense of so much that never made sense to me before. I can at long last understand why the parts only hear "the bad stuff"; why the messages I've been trying to get through to them about how safe we are now have been falling on deaf ears. I understand why I ended up so destabilised each time I went into therapy in the past - despite well-meaning therapists, I can see that they simply lacked the understanding of what was going on in my brain and how to work with me without destabilising me. I finally get why it's not about what happened to me so much as about what is continuing to go on inside of me. The book is an absolute wealth of information, and I'm going to have to read it over and over to take it all in - there are so many explanations for things that I thought weren't explainable!I'm living proof that the model that Fisher teaches really works. After giving up on going into therapy again, after too many attempts that just resulted in day to day life becoming unmanageable while in therapy, Fisher's teachings inspired me to have another go. I found a therapist trained in IFS and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and even though it's very early days I'm already starting to work with my parts in a way I've never been able to before. I feel better and more settled at the end of a therapy hour than the beginning, and I'm already better able to manage triggering. This model really works!My wish is that every single trauma survivor looking for answers, and every single therapist, be able to read this gem of a book. I salute and truly appreciate Janina Fisher for her curiosity and desire to find ways to make therapy work for us severely traumatised folk, and for making her learnings and skills so accessible to so many via this book.

This is the absolute best book I have found on trying to heal from dissociative identity disorder. It is geared toward practitioners and clients both.It is also geared mostly toward people who have complex trauma histories and don’t have the same inner world as someone with DID. However, I felt like much of what is written for non-DID folks, I felt like I could apply to my system of DID parts. When I started reading this book I was able to apply some really important concepts and was able to become much more stable in two weeks time.Unfortunately, my therapist was not as interested in becoming an expert on this particular methodology as she has already studied so many other similar models. So, if you have DID, it may be a little harder to do this on your own, at least that is how I felt. I made great progress, but would have loved to have made more, but there were just some quandaries unique to DID that I would have loved to have help exploring if more was offered in the book for those with DID.I so wish this author would write a new book directed specifically to those with DID because there are few practitioners who really understand it as deeply as this author does.This book is definitely worth reading if you are motivated to get better and change your way of thinking. I imagine it is also great for practitioners to help their clients.

I cannot recommend this book enough. For any therapists working with clients who have traumatic pasts or dissociative disorders like DID, OSDD type1 or BPD this book is extremely thorough and informative. For people who are working through these issues, this books is very validating and helpful in pathworking and parts therapy. Excellent work!

This book was recommended to me by my professional supervisor. I bought it and gave it to my therapist to read. She said the book is excellent and has since advised all of her colleagues to read this it, and me too. Together we used some of the useful diagrams in the book to support my understanding of me. I have found the book truly enlightening. Thankfully, it has helped me to make sense of my previous therapists limited and outmoded approach to trauma and has highlighted so accurately what went wrong within the therapy room - a place where the therapist became unwittingly scared of her client resulting in there being no therapist in the room. Neither good for me nor the therapist. Janina provides an excellent approach to supporting the recovery of clients who have experienced trauma including working with the different parts of individuals who present with Dissociative Identity Disorder. I recently contacted Janina and she replied saying “You are just the type of person for whom I wrote the book! I am so glad it helped you understand yourself and understand why your previous therapy was so difficult. Remember that children grow and develop over a very long time, and it is always healing for them when their parents heal —- even when they are already grown”. I recommend this book to ALL survivors, therapists, counsellors and mental health professionals working with trauma.

This is a fantastic, beautifully written book. It is the first time I have found a book that perfectly describes what is going on in my head. If you have a dissociative disorder read this book.

Allows you to finally make sense of lots of behaviours in your life that emanate from trauma. Encourages you to build an 'observers' awareness so you catch yourself thinking/behaving in certain ways. Really well written and can be used as a guide book for personal use or professionals who want to learn about Janina Fisher's model. I believe all clinicians should adopt the Structural Dissociation model

I started to read this book to develop professionally (as new to working with traumatised children) and I am blown away.The realisation that we have "parts" who attempt to keep us safe and distant from our pain was profound. It is beautifully written and inspired me to explore some facets of myself. I cried happy and sad tears but emerged from this book knowing more about myself and those I care for.Thank you so much for a wonderful journey to understanding a little more on the complexities of trauma. I will be recommending this book to everyone I know.

I read this as part of my training to be a coach, and it's the best book I have read of trauma. I love working with "parts" and this book teaches a way of working that's easy to understand and full of richness and understanding.My supervisor says "it's the best book I've read on this subject" and I'm inclined to agree. Janina Fisher really is making something here that works, and works well.