Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Embracing Our Fragmented Selves with Janina Fisher, PhD
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Papists podcast. My name is gaming Person.
- 0:04Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
- 0:07Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
- 0:11Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show.
- 0:16Speaker 1: So five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome
- 0:20Speaker 1: back to the podcast. Very excited to have back Doctor
- 0:25Speaker 1: Janina Fisher. Janina, welcome as always.
- 0:28Speaker 2: Thank you all. I mean, we've known each other for
- 0:32Speaker 2: like fifteen years.
- 0:34Speaker 1: It's been a long time. Been a lot, it's been
- 0:37Speaker 1: a long time. It's been a long time. It's a
- 0:40Speaker 1: pleasure and honor to have you back here. So for
- 0:44Speaker 1: those who maybe aren't too familiar, Doctor Janina Fisher is
- 0:47Speaker 1: a licensed clinical psychologist and a former instructor at Harvard
- 0:50Speaker 1: Medical School. She's an international expert on the treatment of
- 0:54Speaker 1: trauma and an advisory board member of the Trauma Research Foundation,
- 0:58Speaker 1: as well as the author of three books, including her
- 1:01Speaker 1: most recent one, which we're gonna be talking about today,
- 1:04Speaker 1: titled Embracing Our Fragmentedselves, a Workbook for Trauma Survivors and Therapists.
- 1:10Speaker 1: Ganina is best known as a creator and trainer of
- 1:13Speaker 1: Trauma informed stabilization treatment, otherwise known as TIST. TIST a
- 1:19Speaker 1: parts approach to resolution and healing. All right, Tina, we're
- 1:25Speaker 1: gonna be talking about this book, but even before that,
- 1:27Speaker 1: to share the listeners where you're from originally and where
- 1:30Speaker 1: you are currently.
- 1:32Speaker 2: So I'm originally from Boston, which you know, in the
- 1:38Speaker 2: early days of the trauma field, that was the heartland
- 1:42Speaker 2: of the trauma world.
- 1:44Speaker 1: Ground zero.
- 1:45Speaker 2: It was ground zero because we had Bessel vander Kok's
- 1:48Speaker 2: Trauma Center, we had Judith Hermann's Victims of Violence program,
- 1:54Speaker 2: and and that's you know, that was really the context
- 2:00Speaker 2: in which this field started to develop and develop and develop,
- 2:04Speaker 2: and as you know, has has just come a long, long,
- 2:10Speaker 2: long way.
- 2:13Speaker 1: So, okay, I'm going to The book is titled Embracing
- 2:18Speaker 1: Our Fragment Itselves. Let's kind of start kind of a
- 2:24Speaker 1: wide scope, a wide lens here. Why did you feel
- 2:28Speaker 1: the need to write this book. You've written three books,
- 2:30Speaker 1: you've been in doing this, doing this, You've been traveling
- 2:38Speaker 1: around the world, teaching, talking, being interviewed. Why this book?
- 2:44Speaker 2: Well, actually I got talked into it. I swore, you know,
- 2:50Speaker 2: it's like women saying I am never going to have
- 2:53Speaker 2: another child and then suddenly all there they are and
- 2:57Speaker 2: it's too late. That's kind of what happened to me.
- 3:00Speaker 2: Talked me into having another child, and then I had
- 3:04Speaker 2: to write the book. But I was glad because and
- 3:10Speaker 2: by the way, we're celebrating book release day today the day,
- 3:17Speaker 2: but I did what I wanted to write about. And
- 3:23Speaker 2: wanting to write is different from actually writing, because writing
- 3:27Speaker 2: is a labor. Wanting to write is inspiration. And I
- 3:32Speaker 2: was inspired to write the book because because my treatment approach,
- 3:40Speaker 2: TIST Trauma informed stabilization has just been taking off because
- 3:49Speaker 2: trauma having a trauma informed parts approach is it's just
- 3:55Speaker 2: it works for so many many clients that other modalities
- 4:01Speaker 2: haven't worked for. And I felt, you know, we all
- 4:08Speaker 2: face this. Clients can do very well in the session,
- 4:13Speaker 2: they walk out the door of the office, they close
- 4:15Speaker 2: their computers, and it's all gone. And then they come
- 4:21Speaker 2: back the next week and it's as if what we
- 4:26Speaker 2: did has just evaporated. So I wanted to write a
- 4:31Speaker 2: book that would help help trauma survivors keep their focus
- 4:38Speaker 2: and keep deepening out what they've worked on in therapy.
- 4:44Speaker 2: I think, I don't know if you feel this way too,
- 4:47Speaker 2: I think more and more that therapy is about exercising
- 4:53Speaker 2: new muscles, right, Trauma forces a kind of muscular development
- 5:00Speaker 2: equipped to survive, but not to recover. And so so
- 5:08Speaker 2: there are all kinds of skills and habits of mind
- 5:14Speaker 2: that our clients have to practice and practice and practice
- 5:19Speaker 2: before they become as automatic as triggered responses are. And
- 5:26Speaker 2: so I thought, okay, a workbook would give people away
- 5:31Speaker 2: to exercise those muscles, like muscles that I know you're
- 5:35Speaker 2: familiar with, like mindful noticing rather than talking about because
- 5:43Speaker 2: we use a different part of the brain to mindfully
- 5:46Speaker 2: notice than we do to talk about things.
- 5:51Speaker 1: And and.
- 5:54Speaker 2: You know, my my TIST approach incorporates aspects of sensory
- 6:00Speaker 2: motor psychotherapy, which is a somatic therapy for trauma, and
- 6:07Speaker 2: aspects of internal family systems, which is a wonderful parts approach,
- 6:12Speaker 2: but it's not a trauma informed design. So I wanted
- 6:20Speaker 2: to take the kind of the best pieces that of
- 6:25Speaker 2: those modalities and also from clinical hypnosis to incorporate into TISTS.
- 6:35Speaker 2: And so the workbook just seemed like a way to
- 6:40Speaker 2: help people feel supported, feel understood, and keep exercising those
- 6:48Speaker 2: muscles that bring us to healing.
- 6:53Speaker 1: Are we talking about are we talking about any kind
- 6:58Speaker 1: of trauma or are we talking about specific interpersonal trauma?
- 7:02Speaker 2: Well that was interesting because at first, mostly I speak
- 7:07Speaker 2: about interpersonal trauma, you know, childhood trauma, domestic violence. But
- 7:16Speaker 2: by publishers kept reminding me that there is a whole
- 7:19Speaker 2: world of trauma survivors who've been traumatized in combat, who've
- 7:25Speaker 2: been traumatized in the context of natural disasters, and that
- 7:32Speaker 2: we have to think about them too, So I tried
- 7:36Speaker 2: to make it as inclusive as possible.
- 7:41Speaker 1: So having just said that, why IFS, what about IFS
- 7:49Speaker 1: did you want to bring into this work? And then
- 7:51Speaker 1: let's get more specific about the book.
- 7:55Speaker 2: So the aspects of IFS I wanted to bring into
- 7:58Speaker 2: the book are the fluency in parts language. Right, That's
- 8:04Speaker 2: one of the the strengths of IFS training is that
- 8:10Speaker 2: it requires fluency in the language of parts.
- 8:14Speaker 1: What does that mean?
- 8:16Speaker 2: Meaning instead of saying I feel depressed, we say I'm
- 8:22Speaker 2: noticing a part that feels depressed. Right, there's a part
- 8:27Speaker 2: that's really depressed, really hopeless, And it changes our relationship
- 8:34Speaker 2: to the feeling to use parts language. So if I say,
- 8:40Speaker 2: and by the way, I'm not depressed. It's a very
- 8:44Speaker 2: it's a good day. So what if I say I'm depressed,
- 8:49Speaker 2: I feel this kind of weight on my chest like
- 8:54Speaker 2: like oh God. And if I say a part of
- 8:58Speaker 2: me is depressed, I feel interested and curious. So it
- 9:05Speaker 2: really that language makes a huge difference.
- 9:09Speaker 1: So it's also de shaming in a sense, right.
- 9:12Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, in non pathologizing like it takes right, it
- 9:19Speaker 2: takes away the all the stigma, borderline personality, it was
- 9:24Speaker 2: my fault, all of those issues that complicate trauma recovery.
- 9:32Speaker 1: So speaking about the book, how did you organize it?
- 9:37Speaker 1: How did you want to approach this?
- 9:42Speaker 2: Well, I decided to approach it in the kind of
- 9:49Speaker 2: in the order in which you would approach the therapy. Right,
- 9:56Speaker 2: So it begins with, you know, how do we become fragmented?
- 10:04Speaker 2: What is it that dissociation does for us that allows
- 10:10Speaker 2: us to adapt and survive hostile and violent environments? And
- 10:17Speaker 2: so that's where we start, and then and then we
- 10:21Speaker 2: really move through the process of a therapy essentially, so
- 10:28Speaker 2: then the next stage is helping in the therapy, is
- 10:35Speaker 2: helping our clients to relate to distressing feelings as parts,
- 10:43Speaker 2: which is something else that comes from ifs, because in ifs,
- 10:48Speaker 2: if the part is not curious, compassionate, calm, courageous, creative,
- 10:58Speaker 2: et cetera, it's a part. So in IFS, essentially every
- 11:05Speaker 2: distressing feeling is a communication from a part. So I
- 11:10Speaker 2: incorporated that idea because it's so helpful to people. But
- 11:16Speaker 2: learning to translate and to notice the parts, that's the
- 11:22Speaker 2: mindfulness piece, right, Notice the feeling, notice how you experience
- 11:30Speaker 2: it emotionally physically, helping people to be curious about those
- 11:37Speaker 2: parts rather than as you know, what most people do
- 11:41Speaker 2: is they say, I hate these parts. I don't want
- 11:45Speaker 2: these feelings. I wish they would go away and leave
- 11:49Speaker 2: me alone.
- 11:51Speaker 1: So let's get specific here. You're in session with someone,
- 11:54Speaker 1: how might this come up? How might you introduce this
- 11:58Speaker 1: to them?
- 12:01Speaker 2: Well, I was going to say, I had a session
- 12:03Speaker 2: earlier today, but with a client who has done who
- 12:09Speaker 2: I've worked with for a long time, so she has
- 12:12Speaker 2: done this work. But when she gets very, very very triggered,
- 12:19Speaker 2: the work kind of goes out the window and we
- 12:22Speaker 2: start again at the beginning, but with practicing noticing the
- 12:30Speaker 2: distressing feelings as the feelings of a part. So now
- 12:36Speaker 2: if she were a new client, I would first do
- 12:41Speaker 2: some psycho education about parts and fragmentation, but I don't
- 12:49Speaker 2: have to. What with some people, I just start using
- 12:53Speaker 2: parts language and they seem to recognize they get it,
- 13:02Speaker 2: and so they don't need a lot of psycho education.
- 13:07Speaker 2: Some people are very skeptical and they need the psycho
- 13:12Speaker 2: education to give it credibility or the mistrust requires some
- 13:19Speaker 2: education because because the psycho education helps them to be
- 13:26Speaker 2: interested in the information without having to trust me, which
- 13:31Speaker 2: is very advantageous. And so really my client and I today,
- 13:39Speaker 2: she was very she was very quote unquote depressed. She said,
- 13:47Speaker 2: I've been spending about fifteen hours a day in bed.
- 13:51Speaker 2: I just go to bed, pull up the covers, and
- 13:54Speaker 2: I go to sleep, or I zone out, wake up
- 13:58Speaker 2: hours later, and it's getting worse and worse. And so
- 14:07Speaker 2: so I asked her to notice the part that keeps
- 14:14Speaker 2: going back to bed, and to notice what that part
- 14:21Speaker 2: was worried about. And the part said, I'm afraid I'll
- 14:30Speaker 2: be overwhelmed, right, so meaning I go to bed and
- 14:37Speaker 2: pull up the covers to avoid being overwhelmed. And so
- 14:43Speaker 2: then of course my client got a little more curious
- 14:48Speaker 2: about this part that's feeling overwhelmed and so I said, well,
- 14:54Speaker 2: notice the feelings that are overwhelming this part. What she
- 15:00Speaker 2: noticed was that she felt feelings of fear and wanting
- 15:07Speaker 2: to cry. And so as we explored this part that
- 15:15Speaker 2: was scared and wanted to cry and just went to
- 15:19Speaker 2: bed and pulled up the covers, she discovered there were
- 15:25Speaker 2: protector parts who were freaked out by this part wanting
- 15:31Speaker 2: to cry, because you don't cry in a dangerous world,
- 15:37Speaker 2: because it's not safe to cry in a dangerous world.
- 15:42Speaker 2: And so again, so much of this is mindfulness. So
- 15:48Speaker 2: we noticed that pattern, and she said, yeah, it was
- 15:54Speaker 2: unsafe to cry. It was imperative not to cry.
- 16:00Speaker 1: Let me if I may. What what are you doing here?
- 16:03Speaker 1: You're you're inviting her to notice you're essentially doing what.
- 16:11Speaker 2: So I was doing, essentially what we do in somatic therapy.
- 16:17Speaker 2: You ask the client to notice what's happened. In somatic therapy,
- 16:23Speaker 2: we say, notice what's happening in the body. In test,
- 16:28Speaker 2: we say, notice what's happening for that part.
- 16:34Speaker 1: Notice what's happening for that part.
- 16:36Speaker 2: Notice what thoughts that part is having, Notice what feelings
- 16:41Speaker 2: those that part is having. It's it's really very much
- 16:46Speaker 2: the same thing. And you know all the all the
- 16:49Speaker 2: but I'll call all the best treatments, all the treatments
- 16:53Speaker 2: that therapists enjoy using and clients enjoy working with, like
- 17:00Speaker 2: emd R, like if S, like sensory motor, somatic experiencing.
- 17:06Speaker 2: They all have a very big mindfulness component. And and
- 17:14Speaker 2: you know, we've been talking in the trauma field about
- 17:16Speaker 2: mindfulness since the nineties when Bessel first started talking about
- 17:25Speaker 2: mindfulness and psychotherapy. And you know, we now know that
- 17:31Speaker 2: the mindfulness part of the brain, the medial prefrontal cortex,
- 17:36Speaker 2: is an it's an integrative area. It's an area that
- 17:41Speaker 2: takes in information from both sides of the brain, from
- 17:45Speaker 2: lower more emotional parts of the brain to intellectual parts
- 17:50Speaker 2: of the brain. And so it's a very small but
- 17:56Speaker 2: powerful you know, it's Dan Seagel's part of the brain.
- 18:04Speaker 2: So it's it's a very powerful therapeutic agent.
- 18:12Speaker 1: Is it so important within this context? Is it the
- 18:17Speaker 1: crucial component? One of the crucial components within this context,
- 18:20Speaker 1: because it allows the client to differentiate between past and.
- 18:26Speaker 2: Present, right, that's part of it.
- 18:30Speaker 1: Yes, knowing that in other words, I'm safe now, you know,
- 18:35Speaker 1: maybe I'm being triggered, but I'm not experiencing the trauma.
- 18:39Speaker 2: Right, right, So it allows that ability to distinguish me
- 18:47Speaker 2: now right here, from me then feelings from observations. Right.
- 18:57Speaker 2: So we can have a feeling that's in context, right,
- 19:03Speaker 2: or that is a feeling that I think of as
- 19:09Speaker 2: as a healing emotion, and we have feelings that are
- 19:14Speaker 2: essentially feeling memories of pain and suffering. So the medial
- 19:20Speaker 2: prefrontal cortex helps us to notice those distinctions.
- 19:28Speaker 1: So you said, in the sense the book is simulating
- 19:34Speaker 1: therapy session, how what else happens? What happens next?
- 19:38Speaker 2: Then, well, the book actually simulates the progress of a
- 19:45Speaker 2: therapeutic journey, okay, And the goal of the therapeutic journey
- 19:52Speaker 2: is not processing events. Because one of the the sort
- 19:59Speaker 2: of epiphanies that I've had over the it's going to
- 20:03Speaker 2: be forty five years that I've been in practice and
- 20:07Speaker 2: thirty years actually over thirty years since I started in
- 20:11Speaker 2: the trauma field. And what I've come to realize is
- 20:19Speaker 2: that the focus on events was a place that we
- 20:25Speaker 2: went in the trauma field because we were all children
- 20:29Speaker 2: of Freud, and that's what that was the essence of
- 20:33Speaker 2: psychodynamic therapy, right, remembering the past ab reacting it reexperiencing it,
- 20:41Speaker 2: except that that doesn't work with trauma, because when you
- 20:45Speaker 2: re experience trauma, you retraumatize yourself. And also, I've come
- 20:56Speaker 2: to understand that trauma really is the impact of not
- 21:02Speaker 2: only unique individual events, but the environment in which they occur.
- 21:09Speaker 2: Because a child in an abusive family lives in an
- 21:15Speaker 2: unsafe environment. Maybe there's no event on Tuesday, but the
- 21:20Speaker 2: child is just as scared on Tuesday as on Wednesday
- 21:25Speaker 2: when somebody abuses that child. Right, So there's the dread,
- 21:31Speaker 2: the fear, the shame occurs twenty four hours a day,
- 21:36Speaker 2: seven days a week because the environment is unsafe. And
- 21:43Speaker 2: the same is true in domestic violence. The same is
- 21:47Speaker 2: true in war. Right, even if there is no you know,
- 21:53Speaker 2: actually warfare going on, right, military and individuals are still
- 22:00Speaker 2: not safe, even though nothing is happening in the moment.
- 22:06Speaker 2: So I begun to understand trauma as the result of
- 22:12Speaker 2: the whole environment. So PTSD isn't the result just of
- 22:18Speaker 2: the individual events. It's the result of the environment. And
- 22:24Speaker 2: the same is true for complex PTSD, even more true
- 22:28Speaker 2: for complex PTSD, for borderline personality disorder, which is the
- 22:36Speaker 2: research shows is a trauma related disorder, not a personality disorder,
- 22:42Speaker 2: and of course the dissociative disorders. And that was the
- 22:49Speaker 2: other thing I wanted from TIST. I wanted it to
- 22:52Speaker 2: be a treatment that could be used with any traumatized
- 22:57Speaker 2: person because I think, I think we are all fragmented.
- 23:04Speaker 2: I both agree with Dick Schwartz, We're all we all
- 23:09Speaker 2: have multiple consciousness, not just one consciousness, and trauma makes
- 23:17Speaker 2: those parts of us more extreme and polarized.
- 23:23Speaker 1: In terms of the journey of healing and a sense,
- 23:27Speaker 1: which is what we're talking about here, where does attachment
- 23:32Speaker 1: come into play?
- 23:33Speaker 2: Oh, thank you for asking. So the goal of TISS
- 23:42Speaker 2: is a is an attachment relationship between the client and
- 23:48Speaker 2: the parts that heals the traumatic attachment of childhood. So
- 23:59Speaker 2: you know, and and because if you think about it,
- 24:06Speaker 2: dissociation and fragmentation our rejection of the traumatized parts. Right,
- 24:18Speaker 2: That's why clients say, I floated up to the ceiling
- 24:21Speaker 2: and I watched what was happening to that other child,
- 24:27Speaker 2: And in the course of rejecting the trauma, not wanting
- 24:35Speaker 2: to believe it, thinking, you know, the belief it's my
- 24:38Speaker 2: fault is really a rejection of the trauma and it's
- 24:47Speaker 2: very adaptive if you're that child and you still have
- 24:51Speaker 2: another ten years or to live in that environment, but
- 24:57Speaker 2: it's not very adaptive when you're trying to heal. So
- 25:04Speaker 2: the goal is a reparative experience in which the client
- 25:12Speaker 2: authentically feels a compassionate, loving kindness towards the parts and
- 25:20Speaker 2: can offer those parts the reparative experience of acceptance, comfort, respect,
- 25:35Speaker 2: and gratitude, gratitude for how the parts helped them to survive.
- 25:43Speaker 1: What gets in the way of that, though oftentimes.
- 25:47Speaker 2: What gets in the way of that or exactly what
- 25:51Speaker 2: happened to my client today where she was triggered, there
- 25:58Speaker 2: were parts that were scared and wanted to cry. There
- 26:03Speaker 2: were physical symptoms connected to a twelve year old part
- 26:08Speaker 2: who had been raped and was pregnant, which was accounted
- 26:14Speaker 2: for my client's physical symptoms. And let's see, I just
- 26:21Speaker 2: lost the train my train of thought here. And what
- 26:28Speaker 2: had happened was that she she blended with those parts,
- 26:34Speaker 2: which just another term that comes from ifs. She blended
- 26:38Speaker 2: with these parts so that she thought, there's something medically
- 26:43Speaker 2: wrong with me. I don't want to get out of bed.
- 26:47Speaker 2: My life is completely screwed up. All I want to
- 26:53Speaker 2: do is cry, and I'm ashamed of my I hate
- 26:58Speaker 2: myself for wanting to cry. That was her story. And
- 27:05Speaker 2: by the end, what was happening. By the end of
- 27:08Speaker 2: the session, what was happening was she was feeling love
- 27:14Speaker 2: and compassion toward that twelve year old because the twelve
- 27:19Speaker 2: year old didn't know that she was feeling sick because
- 27:24Speaker 2: she was two or three months pregnant. She was exhausted
- 27:31Speaker 2: and just wanted to sleep, which any woman who's been
- 27:35Speaker 2: pregnant will tell you is a very disturbing feature of
- 27:43Speaker 2: early pregnancy. And she had a mother who wouldn't tell
- 27:49Speaker 2: her she was pregnant, but kept saying she had strapped throat,
- 27:55Speaker 2: kept her out of school, and isolated her from me
- 28:00Speaker 2: support she might have had from friends or teachers. And
- 28:06Speaker 2: she could feel this compassion for that twelve year old
- 28:11Speaker 2: and what she had been through, and the twelve year
- 28:16Speaker 2: old just melted like the twelve year old was relaxed,
- 28:23Speaker 2: and and my clients told her, you know, it's okay
- 28:29Speaker 2: to be tired, it's okay to sleep, but I'm not
- 28:35Speaker 2: necessarily going to go to sleep when you want to
- 28:38Speaker 2: go to sleep. And for that twelve year old. You know,
- 28:43Speaker 2: think guy had. The twelve year old was isolated, didn't
- 28:47Speaker 2: know what was wrong with her. Oh there was no
- 28:51Speaker 2: one there if she if she cried, and she had
- 28:56Speaker 2: a mother who was basically isolating her, and lyne about
- 29:02Speaker 2: why she was isolated. And so it was what Bruce
- 29:08Speaker 2: Ecker in his memory reconsolidation approach, he calls it a
- 29:16Speaker 2: disconfirming experience. He says that memory processing or reconsolidation is
- 29:25Speaker 2: the outcome of helping the client have a disconfirming experience,
- 29:32Speaker 2: have an experience that would not be possible in a
- 29:39Speaker 2: traumatic world. So for the twelve year old, having Annie
- 29:46Speaker 2: offer all this warmth and compassion and support was a
- 29:52Speaker 2: disconfirming experience. And one of the things we' practice a
- 30:00Speaker 2: lot intost is having clients stay with a part because
- 30:09Speaker 2: so often has as you know, we all we have
- 30:14Speaker 2: uncomfortable feelings. We want to get away from them as
- 30:17Speaker 2: quickly as possible. So I built it in as a
- 30:21Speaker 2: skill right to be able to unblend notice the part,
- 30:27Speaker 2: notice themselves noticing the part and staying with the part.
- 30:35Speaker 2: And I'm not staying with is a disconfirming experience. Who
- 30:43Speaker 2: who is there to stay with a child who's been
- 30:47Speaker 2: abused or is suffering the effects of being abused. So
- 30:54Speaker 2: it's very it's actually it's a very it's a it's
- 30:58Speaker 2: a very I think it's a very beautiful model.
- 31:03Speaker 1: Gina. As we kind of wind down here, who would
- 31:07Speaker 1: you say this book is for?
- 31:09Speaker 2: Well, well, I called it a workbook. I started out
- 31:13Speaker 2: calling it a workbook for survivors, and then and then
- 31:18Speaker 2: I added and their therapists, because because I think so
- 31:24Speaker 2: often the therapist doesn't necessarily have all the information that's
- 31:31Speaker 2: in the book. And then it really helps the client
- 31:36Speaker 2: if the therapist speaks the same language, works with the
- 31:42Speaker 2: same ideas, and I thought it's a wonderful way to
- 31:46Speaker 2: work with.
- 31:48Speaker 1: The client. Ginina, before you go, I just want to
- 31:53Speaker 1: say to you, besides the fact that I find you
- 31:57Speaker 1: so inspiring and I love you, I remember when I
- 32:02Speaker 1: was in Central Motorcyclotherapy training level one and level two,
- 32:06Speaker 1: when you were there and I was watching you do
- 32:09Speaker 1: these what do you call it examples or demonstrations demonstration
- 32:16Speaker 1: in front of everybody, and the thing that just mesmerized
- 32:21Speaker 1: me and blew me away and so inspired me was
- 32:25Speaker 1: your ability to be.
- 32:31Speaker 3: Yourself, just be so off you were funny you were.
- 32:36Speaker 3: You were just genuine. You were able to hear what
- 32:42Speaker 3: this client was telling you, and you had a way
- 32:48Speaker 3: of making them feel.
- 32:54Speaker 1: Deepathologizing, yes, but it was human, That's what it was.
- 32:58Speaker 4: Human and lighter and lighter and lighter they are, you know,
- 33:07Speaker 4: I very early on in my career, back in the
- 33:12Speaker 4: in the nineties, I remember being criticized by supervisors for
- 33:20Speaker 4: lightening up trauma therapy because trauma therapy was supposed to
- 33:24Speaker 4: be as serious as the terrible.
- 33:27Speaker 2: Things that happened. And I thought, if I were a client,
- 33:32Speaker 2: I wouldn't want things to be as heavy as they were.
- 33:38Speaker 2: I would want these terrible things to feel lighter rather
- 33:43Speaker 2: than heavier. So yeah, you know, I think what I've
- 33:49Speaker 2: noticed over the years is I became less and less
- 33:53Speaker 2: worried about what I was doing and more and more
- 33:57Speaker 2: able to just be in the moment with people. And
- 34:03Speaker 2: I think that's what you were seeing it and it, yeah,
- 34:07Speaker 2: makes the job of being a therapist so much easy.
- 34:10Speaker 1: But that ain't easy, right, It's that it isn't easy
- 34:16Speaker 1: to do for a lot of people.
- 34:18Speaker 2: Oh, it takes years. I mean, I think I think
- 34:22Speaker 2: it probably and I've you know, I've been in practice
- 34:25Speaker 2: now forty five years as of February first, and I
- 34:30Speaker 2: think it took me twenty years to feel like I
- 34:34Speaker 2: was a decent therapist m hm. But part of that
- 34:39Speaker 2: was probably that I was working too hard.
- 34:42Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Well, awesome, Gina. It's it's such a pleasure
- 34:47Speaker 1: talking with you and having you back here once again.
- 34:50Speaker 1: The book is called Embracing Our Fragmentedselves. It is out.
- 34:53Speaker 1: It's a workbook for trauma survivors and therapists by Ganina Fisher. Jana.
- 34:59Speaker 1: Janina had to people get in touch with you. How
- 35:02Speaker 1: do they learn more about the book? What's the best way?
- 35:05Speaker 2: Well, they can. I think there should be something about
- 35:11Speaker 2: the book on my website. They should certainly find out
- 35:14Speaker 2: more about what I'm doing and and writing. They can
- 35:18Speaker 2: sign up for my newsletter.
- 35:20Speaker 1: Okay, that's that, Janina Fisher dot com, right, right, right, Okay.
- 35:27Speaker 1: They can also learn about the book at Amazon. Awesome, Ginia,
- 35:33Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here. Thank you.
- 35:36Speaker 2: I've such a great joy to celebrate this day with you.
- 35:40Speaker 1: I appreciate it and I appreciate you. Be well you too,
- 35:44Speaker 1: Take care, take care, bye bye.