The Purpose  of   HEALING - K.I.S.S. - as stated 12 years ago - was and is   to help me and my potential P E E R s  "to HEAL ourselves into WHOLEness, and - by extension - all of CREATion!"

Intro to Healing-K.i.s.s. 2001-2013 and Overview of its main libraries [If you look for a word on this page, click ctrl/F and put a word in "find"]

I focus my experiencing and awareness on being "a   pioneer of  Evolution  in  learning  to  feel": I let my Body vibrate and my Heart 'womb' pain, shame, fear, boredom, powerlessness, so feelings can >heal >guide>fulfill>evolve, and ~~~ offer ~~~"goldmines"~~~ to us all!! "I want you to feel everything, every little thing!"

Chapter Nine If you can't make anything shift

The body shift most often happens
in the third, fourth, or fifth focusing movement.
The third – you get a handle for the quality of the felt sense,
and the fourth is resonating back and forth between felt sense and handle.
The fifth is the one in which you ask the felt sense what it is.
Often simultanously all three

Delibererate Letting-Go

p.103
The very word "focusing" suggests
that you are trying to make sharp what is at first vague.
You grope down into a felt sense
and you control the process to prevent yourself from drifting.
"I want to know about   t h i s   feeling, not any others right now",
"What's   t h i s  feeling about? What's in it, what's underneath it?"
Once you have made contact with a felt sense clearly and strongly,
you drop the reins.
Don't try to control what comes from it.
L e t  what comes from the felt sense come:
words, pictures, physical sensations,
as long as it is  f r o m  this felt sense.

 

Letting the body really shift

Learn to let your body take more of a shift.
Try exhaling a deep long breath.
Try nodding with your head.
Try relaxing your whole body as if you had been sitting stiffly.
This shift allows you to melt.
If you do this purposely a few times,
your body will learn to express itself more freely.
Then don't do it on purpose any more,
see what more expressive body moves come of their own accord.

p.104
Some triggering questions
What is this, really?
What is the crux of this?
What is the worst of it?
What are the two or three things about it that trouble me the most?
What is at the center of it?
What is under this?
What is doing it?
What needs to happen for me with this?
What would it take to feel better?

p.105
kind that asks what's wrong and kind that asks what would be right.
We can ask into what the problem has been,
or we can ask about what needs to happen and hasn't yet.
Look for the life-steps forward,
and not only at what the trouble has been.

When the handle fits but then you are stuck
"I'm scared" – and nothing else comes

p.106
Bring home to yourself
that it probably goes with much else in your life,
your past, your future, other people, and so on.
It is a whole slice of your life, a whole context.
What is the whole sense in your body when you think of all that?
Or try, "Why am I scared?" again don't answer.
Keep saying the question and while you say it,
try to get the  w h o l e   f e e l  
of what goes along with this particular "scared"
Feel it inside you and see what fresh words come from it,
"I'm afraid . and there's a kind of loneliness with it
like I'm – Yes that's what it feels
like I've been left stranded alone on a high scary place
and everybody has gone away,
and there's never going to be anybody to help me.."

 

 

Using Imagery

Anyone can form an everyday image, even with open eyes.
Try it:
Imagine now the room where you sleep,
how do you get to the door from the bed?
You can conjure a visual image of that even as you are reading.
In that inner space, you can ask for an image of a feeling to form.
Wait till it pops in.
The image will express a felt sense.
You might see a forest, a figure, a storm, a wall, yourself running.
When you have the image, then see how this image makes you feel.
Often just having the image will shift something.
"What does this image now make me feel?"
It will probably give you a step

 

 

p.107
Looking up the answer in the back of the book

"What would it feel like, in my body, if this difficulty got resolved?"
If you wait a few seconds you will feel the shift in your body.
It helps also, when you do this,
to let your body shift outwardly, if it wants to.
Perhaps your body will want to sit up with your head high,
or it will want to relax and exhale,
or move in some other way of its own accord.
By going through this process,
you let your body give you a taste of what it will be like to feel right.
When you reach that good feeling, keep it.
See what you learn from it.
Tell yourself, "I can feel this way all the time"
Then wait.
If something new inside comes to you and says,
"No,. Sorry. You can't feel this way all the time,"
ask that "something" what it is.
This is much like prematurely looking up the answer to a math problem
in the back of the book…
You let your body feel its answer.
Not only does this feel good at the time you are doing it,
but it lets you ask: "Ok, what's in the way of feeling t h i s way?"

p.108
Stay and pretend it's all solved until a  n e w  "what says no?" comes.
You can do that by holding onto the good feeling,
just as you would hold onto an answer from the back of the book
while tyring to make steps from it backwards.

 

p.109

Don't say, "it must be…"

We don't listen to our bodies enough.
. you might form a global felt sense of a problem,
then grope for its crux and find it and feel good for a second or two.
But then the old analyzing habit can take over.
"Oh, sure, I know what this is about," "It must be…"
turn phrases like this off.

Ask, wait, and let your body reply.
Your effectiveness in focusing, and the rewards it gives you,
will improve with practice.
You will find yourself using it not only in times of stress
but as a help in solving all life's problems.
Learn to trust your body's guidance.

 

 

 

 

The sea for a change,
the sunset
and back to waterfalls

 

Part III People helping each other

Chapter Ten Finding Richness in Others

p.116
focusing is easier with another person present,
even though focuser and listener say nothing at all.
An exchange like this occurred during a long-distance call:

"I feel grumpy and annoyed,
and I have this work to do tonight,
and I don't want to do it.
Just can't make myself start."

"OK, can you go down to where it is, and see what it is?"

"Are you OK for a while, if I do that?"

"Yes, it's fine"

. There is a long silence while the person focuses.
Then:

"Whew! I feel better. I got what it is."

"Are you OK now, or is it not completely OK yet?"

"I think it's OK for now. Thanks. How are YOU?"

 

p.118
The Listening Manual
"the method of 'saying back" was discovered by Carl Rogers
"Oh yes, I can sure see how you feel"

[Continuation of the Listening Manual on a later page -where?]

Focusing and Society

p. 152
Once people experience what is at first vague and murky,
opening into step after step of one's inner detail and change,
then living without this in people becomes lonely and shallow.
One is frustrated with people who don't know focusing.
One wants to say, "Could you go see more what that is?"
but the person doesn't know what that means.
[my response to Zipi just now – she called , a rare call –
that she is milling around near the Cinematek in Tel-Aviv
and cannot find herself]

People think they already know what they feel.
They may be in excellent touch with their "gut feelings",
but then they let it go at that.
They don't know that a road of many steps would open
if they sensed beyond the obvious feelings,
into what is not as yet clear.

[Eugene tells about the "Changes" groups,
"a continuing social structure":]

After the mutual listening part … people go to special groups.
There are listening-training groups.
There are focusing groups in which a very gentle climate prevails,
and they would be shy to let you in.
... activities:
"I would like to lead a dance movement group tonight.
Meet me in this corner."
Or it might have been behavior modification
or a group on Jungian dream interpretation.

p.153

Focusing makes all other methods more effective
by putting them in relation to the body's felt sense

[[everything is mentioned here
except for moving emotions physically…]]

p.155

Chapter Thirteen: Experience beyond Roles

In the most recent years [1978!]
there has been a great development:
millions of people have "gotten in touch with their feelings."
If one has not be accustomed to turn inward to one's feelings,
it is a big life-step to do so.
Many methods and movements exist that have this as their essence.
Focusing is a different, further step.

p. 156

Beyond contacting feelings there is a different inward "place'"
A holistic body sense, at first unclear ... form .
It is a sense of the whole meaning of a particular concern.
It is from this "place"
that a series of inward shifts, a road of many steps, can arise.
An inward texture of detail reveals itself and changes

We found focusing by studying patients who already did it.
We didn't invent it. We only made it specific and teachable.
Human experience does not consist of pieces or contents
that have a static shape.
As one senses the exact, finely complex shape at a given moment,
it also changes in this very sensing.

A person's experience cannot be figured out by others,
or even by the person experiencing it.
It cannot be expressed in common labels.
It has to be met, found, felt, attended to, and allowed to show itself.
A vignette will help show what I mean.

When it was her turn to say a little about a problem
(so we could practice listening),
she said her husband insisted that she talk when she came home.
He had aided her long struggle for professional training,
and now he wanted her to share her experiences with him.
It was only fair.
Yet when she came home she wanted to rest, to be in herself.
She wanted to be able to refuse.

I obeyed the rules of good listening and said just that:
"You long to be in yourself, to rest, to be able to refuse, Is that right?"
Something inside her seemed to uncramp.
"Yes, to be able to refuse!
To be able to go by my own needing and feeling!
To let that count for something even in relation to another person!
Yes, yes!"
The others:
was she not being selfish,
was she not avoiding contact with another human?
… whole chains of deductions .

p.157
no one seemed to want to take what she had said as she had said it.
Everyone seemed to want something else,
something she didn't say,
to be what was "really" there.
I had "only" listened.
She braved the supervisor, the therapist, and the others.
Now she could feel that she knew exactly what she was experiencing.
It resonated in her.
The words touched the experience,
and the experience supported the words.
She had discovered, through being heard accurately,
that her feeling had its own personal shape and being.

But couldn' t one argue that this woman's experience fits a common pattern?
.. it might seem to fit a pattern just now,
but moments later it will fit another or none.
Experience is richer than patterns and it is changing.

p.159
Focusing lets people find their own inner source of direction.
It can be a source of new patterns, devised freshly by each individual.
Instead of having only the predictable, expected emotions the roles call for,
we often have unclear feelings.
They are unclear
because "clear" feelings are those that are already patterned.

p.160
Free sex is the new form;
and while people are ready to change the old,
the new one forced on them may not fit either.
Endless hurt goes on, along with feelings of guilt and self-blame,
because the new form doesn't fit.
"What's wrong with me?
If this form fits everybody else, why doesn't it fit me?"
Some couples who know focusing
are developing unique and differentiated ways of opening their relationships.
Others say they have a new respect for jealousy
as they can feel it in their bodies.
What is clear is that adopting general patterns, old or new,
is not the way.
Our bodies constantly absorb new learnings,
additions to their already gigantic store of wisdom.
Real learning can occur only in dialogue with one's body.
A sensitive focusing approach can eventuate in really livable patterns
suited uniquely to each of us and our close people.
.
The holistic felt sense is more inclusive than reason

It includes the reasons of reason
as well as what made the feeling,
and much more.
.

Rocks like in the desert, but in the middle of this town

 

 

Flowers in non-desert land

 

 

Arnon and Ayelet completed their full water-days with reading in bed,
while I was reading and copying passages about "the Felt Sense"

Somebody who has learnt from Eugene Gendlin
Bret Lyon: The Breath of Life : Freeing your Voice


What is the source of our first suffering?
It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak.
It was born in the moment when we accumulated
silent things within us.
–Gaston Bachelard

Stories about Focusing Partnerships
{see for instance the story about Christel and Siegfried}

A Focusing Partnership Program

"I am tremendously happy with the program.
It seems like a complete success and very well implemented.
I have found two focusing partners."

Many people all over the country have a focusing partnership.
This means that they receive a half hour of attention from another person,
and then they give the person a half hour of their attention,
at least once a week at a regular time, either in person or on the phone.

Most people use the time to work on their main concerns that day,
which might be inner experiences,
their attempts to develop as people,
or a difficult letter to write,
the next thing to do in one’s work,
or whatever one finds uppermost.

Your partner offers no advice, no judgments, no comments.
We have learned that people can go deeper
and arrive at creative steps forward,
if the listener refrains from adding anything in.
Judgments, advice and comments express the person who is giving them,
not the person to whom one is listening.
Your partner will not say that your talk is superficial,
or that it doesn’t make sense,
or that you are wrong, weak, or selfish,
nor will the partner praise one thing and condemn another thing in you,
or in what you say.
We only say what we want to.

Our partnership program is open to anyone with experience or training in Focusing partnership.

I'm glad, that what I've learnt ever since 1977 from
"RE-EVALUATION COUNSELING"
is learnt by others in the terms and frameworks of others!

 

While working on the "Felt Sense" a year ago, I once was scared of an interaction:
A couple - friends - were about to come all the way to Arad to be supported by me.
Wasn't I determined to refrain from all relationship support or any other "helping"?
I turned to Deity and got this answer:

This is your opportunity today to train "The Felt Sense"!
You will learn to integrate "Sentience" and "Awareness".
Do not teach what you learnt, but have not yet trained in,
but let every response be a reverberation from your body.
This is how you will reach the 'Sentience' of their bodies!

I then studied again "Sentience" in Godchannel.com

"[Trees etc.] have sentient awareness, feelings~~~
it's just that most humans are unable
to perceive the kind of sentience that trees have. ...
....

"Your human awareness is vast and varied.
Each nerve cell in your body and every other kind of cell as well~~~
has a life of its own.
Each cell is a focal point of awareness.
But what kind of awareness?
In manifestation there is much more sentience than consciousness.
As discussed earlier in this class,
there is much more of the feeling, magnetic-Will essence in manifestation
than there is the thinking, electric-Spirit essence.

"Trees, for instance are very sentient, but not very conscious.
Human consciousness can easily say, 'Trees have no awareness~~~'
But trees very much do have awareness.
They have sentient awareness, feelings~~~
...

And a great many humans are challenged
to fully perceive even their own sentience~~~
because they are often so much 'in their heads.'

Consciousness in Body

"The first step in relating with Body is to be able perceive me.

"For instance, right now ...
I'm moving my eyes to scan these lines of type as you read.
Can you feel Body doing this?
How does it feel?

"Thank you for stopping and paying attention to something
you may not have noticed in a while~~~
Body ..., the one of us who is closest to you.
In fact, your constant companion and best friend~~~ remember?

"What else do you notice about me?
Can you sense the pull of gravity that draws me into the seat
or whatever is supporting us?
Is there any discomfort, any place where you feel
Body may want to move or change position?
If so, thank you for helping me.
Thank you for noticing Body and allowing me to adjust myself for more comfort.


"If you have done this,
you have used your consciousness to be of service to your sentience.
By becoming consciously aware of even a slight sentient discomfort,
and giving that part of Body or Will the loving light of your conscious awareness,
you have helped consciousness serve sentience,
you have helped the God of Love
become present with something needing healing in your Body or Will.

"This has not been the general rule, in any Creation.
Ever since manifestation began,
consciousness has insisted that sentience should serve him.
I say 'him' because consciousness, light, Spirit~~~
is more expanding and outgoing or 'pushy,'
the more masculine awareness.
And of course sentience, emotion, sensation, Will, the Mother~~~
is more indrawing and magnetic, the more feminine awareness.

"The fundamental problem in Creation
has been a result of the power that consciousness has held over sentience.
At first glance it seems natural.
Spirit and consciousness seem to be stronger, wiser and quicker.
Why shouldn't they be in charge?

"The answer lies in the feeling nature of Will.
The Mother's sentience holds the key
that makes it possible for consciousness to exist.
Her magnetic essence knows just what is right and what is not right
in any given moment~~~
by the way it feels.

"Consciousness can look at the situation and 'see' what is needed,
but without the feeling sense in the Will
that is holding the situation in manifestation,
he cannot really know what is right.
A great many manifestations that look good but feel bad
have resulted from the conscious awareness of Spirit
having dominance over the sentient awareness of the Mother.

"The time for mind to rule over Body and the emotions is coming to an end.
...
It hurts when consciousness 'decides'
what should or should not happen in Creation
without reference to the needs and desires of sentience.
As with the trees, for instance.

"Healing Body, Body healing Creation~~~ this will happen.
It will happen because Body has the parentalness and power
to bring consciousness from its position of master over sentience~~~
to the much healthier position of her servant.
Only when consciousness is at the service of sentience
can the real healing begin.

"... And all of this,
both consciousness and sentience~~~
all of this is Body.
All awareness, all consciousness and sentience is of and in manifestation,
it is the totality of existence.
And real wholeness, true wholeness demands that it all be included.
Nothing can be lifted out of or left behind."

 

 

Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 1992,

1
The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.
2
Witnesses as well as victims are subject to the dialectic of trauma
...the creative energy that is released when the barriers of denial and repression are lifted.
3 The fundamental stages of recovery are establishing safety, reconstructing the trauma story, and restoring the connection between survivors and their community.

14-15
Freud's mentors, Charcot and Beuer, had been highly skeptical about the role of sexuality in the origins of hysteria. Freud himself was initially resistant to the idea; "When I began to analyse the second patient, the expectation of a sexual neurosis being the basis of hysteria was fairly remote from my mind. I had come fresh from the school of Charcot, and I regarded the linking of hysteria with the topic of sexuality as a sort of insult - just as the women patients themselves do.

This empathic identification with his patients' reactions is characteristic of Freud's early writings on hysteria. His case histories reveal a man possessed of such passionate curiosity that he was willing to overcome his own defensiveness, and willing to listen. What he heard was appalling. Repeatedly his patients told him of sexual assault, abuse, and incest. Following back the thread of memory, Freud and his patients uncovered major traumatic events of childhood concealed beneath the more recent, often relatively trivial experiences that had actually triggered the onset of hysterical symptoms. By 1896 Freud believed he had found the source. In a report on eighteen case studies, entitled "The Aetiology of Hysteria, he made a dramatic claim: "I therefore put forward the thesis that at the bottom of every case of hysteria there are one or more occurrences of premature sexual experience, occurrences which belong to the earliest years of childhood, but which can be reproduced through the work of psycho-analysis in spite of the intervening decades. I believe that this is an important finding, the discovery of a caput Nili in neuropathology."

A century later, this paper still rivals contemporary clinical descriptions of the effects of childhood sexual abuse. It is a brilliant, compassionate, eloquently argued, closely reasoned document. Its triumphant title and exultant tone suggest that Freud viewed his contribution as the crowning achievement in the field.

Instead, the publication of The Aetiology of Hysteria marked the end of this line of inquiry. Within a year, Freud had privately repudiated the traumatic theory of the origins of hysteria. HIs correspondence makes clar that he was increasingly troubled by the radical social implications of his hypotheses. Hysteria was so common among women that if his patients' stories were true, and if his theory were correct, he would be forced to conclude that wht he called "perverted acts against childen" were endemic, not only among the proletariat of Paris, whee he had first studied hysteria, but also among the respectable bourgeois families of Vienna, whee he had established his practice. This idea was simply unacceptable. It was beyond credibility.

Faced with this dilemma, Freud stopped listening to his female patients. The turning point is documented in the famous case of Dora. This, the last of Freud's case studies on hysteria, reads more like a battle of wits than a cooperative venture. The interaction between Freud and Dora has been described as "emotional combat". In tis case Freud still acknowledged the reality of his patient's experience: the adolescent Dora was being used as a pawn in her father's elaborate sex intrigues. Her father had essentially offered her to his friends as a sexual toy. Freud refused, however, to validate Dora's feelings of outrage and humiliation. Instead, he insisted upon exploring her feelings or erotic excitement, as if the exploitative situation were a fulfillment of her desire. In an act that Freud viewed as revenge, Dora broke off the tratment.

The breach of their alliance marked the bitter end of an era of collaboration between ambitious investigators and hysterical patients. For close to a century, these patients would again be scorned and silence. Freud's followers held a particular grudge against the rebellious Dora, who was later described by a disceple as "one of the most repulsive hysterics he had ever met."
Out of the ruins of traumatic theory of hysteria, Freud created psychoanalysis. The dominant psychological theory of the next century was founded in the denial of women's reality Sexuality remained the central focus of inquiry. But the exploitative social context in which sexual relations actually occur became utterly invisible. Psychoanalysis became a study of the internal vicissitudes of fantasy and desire, dissociated from the reality of experience. By the first decade of the twentieth century, without ever offering any clinical documentation of false complaints, Feud had concluded that his hysterical patients' accounts of childhood sexual abuse were untrue: "I was at last obliged to recognize that these scenes of seduction had never taken place, and that they were only fantasies which my patients had made up."
Freud's recantation signified the end of the heroic age of hysteria. After the turn of the century the entire line of inquiry initiated by Charcot and continued by his followers fell into neglect. Hypnosis and altered states of consciusness wee once more relegated to the realm of the occult. The study of psychological trauma came to a halt. After a time, the disease of hysteria itself was said to have virtually disappeared.

16
It was thus a larger, political cause that stimulated such passionate interest in hysteria and gave impetus to the investigations of Charcot and his followers in the late nineteenth century. The solution of the mystery of hysteria was intended to demonstrate the triumph of secular enlightenment over reactionary superstition, as well as the moral superiority of a secular world view. Men of science contrasted their benevolent patronage of hysterics with the worst excesses of the Inquisition 1980 "Among the patients locked away in the Salpetriere are many who would have been burned in former times, whose illness would have been taken for a crime."

19
Breuer's patient Anna O. - Bertha Pappenheim..."Her fight against the abuse of women and children was almost a physically felt pain for her." Buber: "I not only admired her but loved her, and will love her until the day I die...."

25
... had just returned from treating men at the front.. argued that the strongest protextion against overwhelming terror was the degree of relatedness between the soldier, his immediate fighting unit, and their leader...the situation of constant danger led soldiers to develop extreme emotional dependency upon their peer group and leaders. They observed that the strongest protection against psychological breakdown was the morale and leadership of the small fighting unit.

37 (Hyperarousal, Intrusion, Constriction....)
It is as if time stops at the moment of trauma The traumatic moment becomes encoded in an abnormal form of memory, which breaks spontaneusly into consciousness, both as flashbacks during waking states and as traumatic nightmares during sleep. Small, seemingly insignificant reminders can also evoke these memories, which often return with all the vividness and emotional force of the original event.

42 constriction
The helpless person escapes from her situation not by action in the real world but rather by altering her state of consciousness... These alterations of consciousness are at the heart of constriction or numbing, the third cardinal symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder.

43
These detached states of consciousness are similar to hypnotic trance states. They share the same featues of surrender of voluntary action, suspension of initiative and critical judgment, subjective detachment or calm, enhanced perception of imagery, altered sensation, including numbness and analgesia, and distortion of reality, including depersonalization, derealizaton, and change in the sense of time.

47 The Dialectic Of Trauma
In the aftermath of an experience of overwhelming danger, the two contradictory responses of intrusion and constriction establish an oscillating rhythm. This dialectic of opposing psychological states is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the post-traumatic syndromes. Since neithr the intrusive nor the numbing symptoms allow for inegration of the traumatic event, the alternation between these two extreme states might be understood as an attempt to find a satisfactory balance between the two. But balance is precisely what the traumatized person lacks. She finds herself caught between the extremes of amnesia or of reliving the trauma, between floods of intense, overwhelming feeling and arid states of no feeling at all, between irritable, impulsive action and complete inhibition of action.

56
Similar oscillations occur in the regulation of intimacy. Trauma impels people both to withdraw from close relationships and to seek them desperately. The profound disruption in basic trust, the common feelings of shame, guilt, and inferiority, and the need to avoid reminders of the trauma that might be found in social life, all foster withdrawal from close relationships. But the terror of the traumatic event intensifies the need for protective attachments.

and also "Be-shvilee ha-nefesh" ("Mind the Road"), by Hanoch Daum and Ariel Hartman, 2010

66
Either harsh criticism or ignorant, blind acceptance greatly compounds the survivor's self-blame and isolation.
Realistic judgments include a recognition of the dire circumstances of the traumatic event and the normal range of victim reactions. They include the recognition of moral dilemmas in the face of severely limited choice. . ... Naively accepting views attempt to dismiss questions of moral judgment with the assertion that such concerns are immaterial in circumstances of limited choice. The moral emotions of shame and guilt, however, are not obliterated, eben in these situations.

68
found that resolving guilt required a detailed understanding of each man's particular reasons for self-blame rather than simply a blanket absolution.

69
from those who bear witness, the survivor seeks not absolution but fairness, compassion, and the willingness to share the guilty knowledge of what happens to peple in extremity.

74 Captivity
A single traumatic event can occur almost anywhere. Prolonged, repeated trauma, by contrast, occurs only in circumstances of captivity ...
79
One form of resistance is refusing to comply with petty demands or to accept rewards. The hunger strike is the ultimate expression of this resistance. Because the prisoner voluntarily subjects himself to greater deprivation than that willed by his captor, he affirms his sense of integrity and self-control,

96 Chapter 5 Child Abuse

100
These childen double and redouble their efforts to gain control of the situation in the only way that seems possible, by "trying to be good."

105
Because the inner sense of badness prserves a relationship, it is not readily given up even aftr the abuse has stopped; rather, it becomes a stable part of the child's personality structure.... The profound sense of inner badness becomes the core around which the abused child's identity is formed, and it persists into adult life.
The malignant sense of inner badness is often camouflaged by the abused child's persistent attempts to be good. In the effort to placate her abusers, the child victim often becomes a superb performer. She attempts to do whatever is required of her. She may become an empathic caretaker for her parents, an efficient housekeeper, an academic achiever, a model of social conformity. She brings to all these tasks a perfectionist zeal, driven by the despserate need to find favor in her parents' eyes. IN adult life, this prematurely forced competence may lead to considerable occupational success. None of her achievements in the world redound to her credit, however, for she usually peceives her performing self as inauthentic and false. Rather, the appreciation of others simply confirms her conviction that no one can truly know her and that, if her secret and true self were recognized, she would be shunned and reviled. (Yanina wrote next to this passage: false self

106
The contradictory identities, a debased and an exalted self, cannot integrate. The abused child cannot develop a cohesive self-image with moderate virtues and tolerable faults.

107
... fragmentation becomes the central principle of personality organization. Fragmentation in consciousness prevents the ordinary integration of knowledge, memory, emotional states, and bodily experience.

108 Atacks on the Body
the normal regulation of emotional states is similarly disrupted by traumatic experiences that repeatedly evoke terror, rage, and grief. These emotions ultimately coalesce in a dreadful feeling that psychiatrists call "dysphoria" and patients find almost impossible to describe. It is a state of ocnfusion, agitation, emptiness and utter aloneness.

111
the survivor's intimate relationships are driven by the hunger for protection and care and are haunted by the fear of abandonment or exploitation. In a quest for rescue, she may seek out powerful authority figures who seem to offer the promise of a special caretaking relationship. By idealizing the person to whom she becomes attached, she attempts to keep at bay the constant fear of being either dominated or betrayed.
Inevitably, however, the chosen person fails to live up to her fantastic expectations. When disappointeld, she may furiously denigrate the same person whom she so recently adored. Ordinary interpersonal conflicts may provoke intense anxiety, depression, or rage. In the mind of the survivor, even minor slights evoke past experiences of callous neglect, and minor hurts evoke past experiences of deliberate cruelty. These distortions are not easily corrected by experience, since the survivor tends to lack the verbal and social skills for resolving conflict. Thus the survivor develops a pattern of intense, unstable relationships, repeatedly enacting dramas of rescue, injustice, and betrayal.

... Her tendency to denigrate herself and to idealize those to whom she becomes attached further clouds her judgment. Her empathic attunement to the wishes of others and her automatic, often unconscious habits of obedience also make her vulnerable to anyone in a position of power or authority. .... the adult survivor is at great risk of repeated victimization in adult life.

127
The testimony of patients is eloquent on the point that recognition of the trauma is central to the recovery process.

128
"good therapists were those who eally validated my experience."

A HEALING RELATIONSHIP

133
The core experiences of psychological trauma are disempowerment and disconnection frm others. Recovery, therefore, is based upon the empowerment of the survivor and the creation of new connections. Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships/ it cannot occur in isolation.

135
"In working with victimized people ....
the therapist is called upon to bear witness to a crime.
She must affirm a position of solidarity with the victim.
This does not mean a simplistic notion that the victim can do no wrong;
rather, it involves an understanding of the fundamental injustice of the traumatic experience
and the need for a resolution that restores some sense of justice. "

141
Just as no survivor can recover alone, no therapist can work with trauma alone.
...The therapist also empathically shares the patient's experience of helplessness. This may lead the therapist to underestimate the value of her own knowledge and skill, or to lose sight of the patient's strengths and resources. Under the sway of countertransference helplessness, the therapist may also lose conficence in the power of the psychotherapy relationship. It is not uncommon for experienced therapists to feel suddenly incompetent and hopeless in the face of a traumatized patient.

143
Carried to its logical extreme, the therapist's defense against feelings of helplessness leads to a stance of grandiose specialness or omnipotence.... the therapist's "impulse to playGod is as ubiquitous as it is pathogenic. ... "The three most common narcissistic snares are the aspirations to heal all, know all, and love all"... In addition to identifying with the victim's helplessness, the therapist identifies with the victim's rage.

155
Recovery unfolds in three stages. The cental task of the first stage is the establishment of safety. The central task of the second stageis remembrance and mourning. The central task of the third stage is reconnection with ordinary life.

159 Often it is necessary for the therapist to reframe accepting help as an act of courage. Acknowledging the reality of one's condition and taking steps to change it become signs of strength, not weakness; initiative, not passivity. Taking action to foster recovery, far from granting voctory to the abuser, empowers the survivor. The therapist may need to state this view explicitly and in detail, in order to address the feelings of shame and defeat that prevent the survivor from accepting the diagnoses and seeking treantment.

179
... constructing a new interpretation of the traumatic experience that affirms the dignity and value of the survivor ... make no assumptions abut either the facts of the meaning of the trauma to the patient. If the therapist fails to ask detailed quesstions, she risks superimposing her own feelings and her own interpretation onto the patient's story.

p. 180 The therapist has to remember
that she is not a fact-finder
and that the reconstruction of the trauma story is not a criminal investigation.
Her role is to be an open-minded, compassionate witness, not a detective.

181
It is understandable for both patient and therapist to wish for a magic transformation, a purging of the evil of the trauma.
Psychotherapy, however, does not get rid of the trauma.
The goal of recounting the trauma story is integration, not exorcism.
In the process of reconstruction,
the trauma story does undergo a transformation,
but only in the sense of becoming more present and more real.
The fundamental premise of the psychotherapeutic work is a belief in the restorative power of truth-telling.
In the telling, the trauma story becomes a testimony.,
... in their work with refugee survivors of political persecution,
note the universality of testimony as a ritual of healing.
Testimony has both a private dimension,
which is confessional and spiritual,
and a public aspect, which is political and judicial.
The use of the word TESTIMONY links both meanings,
giving a new and larger dimension to the patient's individual experience.
Richard Mollica describes the transformed trauma story as simply a "new story",
which is "no longer about shame and humiliation"
but rather "about dignity and virtue."
Through their storytelling,
his refugee patients "regain the world they have lost."

190
True forgiveness cannot be granted until the perpetrator has sought and earned it through confession, repentance , and restitution. Fortunately, the survivor does not need to wait for it. Her healing depends on the discovery of restorative love in her own life; it does not require that this love be extended to the perpetrator.... Prolonged, fruitless struggles to wrest compensation from the perpetrator or frm others may represent a defense against facing the full reality of what was lost. Mourning is the only way to give due honor to loss; there is no adequate compensation. .... Paradoxically, the patient may liberate herself from the perpetrator when she renounces thehope of getting any compensation from him.

192
The best way the therapist can fulfill her responsibility to the patient
is by faithfully bearing witness to her story…
Though the survivor is not responsible for the injury that was done to her,
she is responsible for her recovery.
Paradoxically, acceptance of this apparent injustice is the beginning of empowerment.
The only way that the survivor can take full control of her recovery,
is to take responsibility for it.
The only way she can discover her undestroyed strengths is to use them to their fullest. …
The survivor needs to mourn for the loss of her moral integrity and to find her own way to atone for what cannot be undone.

193
Survivors of chronic childhood trauma face the task of grieving not only for what was lost but also for what was never theirs to lose. The childhood that was stolen frm them is irreplaceable. They must mourn the loss of the foundation of basic trust, the belief in a good parent. "Every soul-murder victim will be wracked by the question 'Is there life without father and mother?'

196
Having come to terms with the traumatic past, the survivor faces the task of creating a future.She has mourned the old self that the trauma destroyed; now she must develop a new self. now she must develop new relatonships; now she must find anew a sustaining faith.

197
Helplessness and isolation are the core experiences of psychological trauma. Empowerment and reconnection are the core experiences of recovery.

199
It bears repeating that the survivor is free to examine aspects of her own personality or behavior that rendered her vulnerable to exploitation only after it has been clearly established that the perpetrator alone is responsible for the crime. A frank exploration of the traumatized person's weaknesses and mistakes can be undertaken only in an environment that protects against shaming and harsh judgment.

202 (chapter Reconciling with Oneself)
Her task now is to become the person she wants to be. In the process she draws upon those aspects of herself that she most values from the time before the trauma, from the experience of the trauma itself, and from the period of recovery. Integrating all of these elements, she creates a new self, both ideally and in actuality.

207 FINDING A SURVIVOR MISSION

209
Sarah Buel, once abattered woman and now a district attorney in charge of domestic violence prosecutions, destribes the central importance of her own story as a gift to others:
"I want women to have some sense of hope, because I can just remember how terrifying it was not to have any hope - the days I felt there was no way out. I feel very much like that's part of my mission, part of why God didn't allow me to die in that marriage, so that I could talk openly and publicly - and it's taken me so many years to be able to do it - about having been battered."
Although giving to others is the essence of the survivor mission, those who practice it recognize that they do so for their own healing.