Dr. Fisher, I wish I had known of your work prior to my retiring in 2018, after being a psychotherapist working with trauma clients, using EMDR for 20 years. I retired because I knew I had hit a wall and did not know what else I could do to help people who had come a long way, but were still somehow stuck. In retirement, I decided to reread all the books I had built my paradigm of people, psychology, trauma, healing, and interventions on. One book was Bessel van Der Kolk's book The Body Keeps the Score. A brilliant book I had read twice before. After the third read, I scoured the comments by other professionals, and one was written by you, and your book Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors was noted. I then read your book, and I knew what I had been missing, not only in my work as a therapist, but as a survivor of horrendous abuse myself. You and your brilliant work changed my life. I simply want to express my gratitude to you. Thank you.

I read Janina's book on Healing Fragmented Selves late last year and it was as if she had walked through my brain, touching everything and showing me what had been going on since I psychologically split following my parents acrimonious divorce when I was 8 years old. I am now 65 and continue to find and listen to my internal parts, knowing they have been released from my unconscious brain where they had been exiled. Janina uses neuro-scientific findings to inform her work on trauma. I can't say enough how this lady has helped me through her book, just astounding!

this therapist feels very soothing and empathetic I really love her

So true, my therapist is always trying to encourage me to be kind and compassionate toward myself & my reaction is always like..ew 😅 I even find it very difficult to have that for my past younger selves too 😢 I have compassion & understanding for just about every other person on the planet apart from myself 😭

You are the most extraordinary human being Janina not least because of the way you explain and simplify the healing work that you do. I am following your work and it has fundamentally changed my life and enabled me to move forward with understanding. You just ‘get’ what it is to be human. Bravo and wishing you many more happy and successful years. 😍

It would be MUCH better if the host didn't keep interrupting Dr. FIsher!

The main issue I have with this is that the brain has been so mangled by trauma and the fear of dying since a young age in me that my adult capacity to comfort the inner child has been compromised. When I asked what it was afraid of and what it wanted, using the techniques in this video, it said protection and comfort, but it wasn't enough to heal the deep wound of abandonment and death trauma, so the inner child has not felt reassured by me at all. However, when I evoked a more super natural power to challenge the anger and hurt, and God's energy of Praise, the inner child started to feel the deeper comfort of that. I asked how does this feel? It said "much better" I said it could help both of us as we have been stuck in this for so long. Then I shifted back in to Praise and it lifted so many years of hurt. So I am wary of self help or therapies that don't use Alchemy of this nature to transmute what the personal field can not do. Inner child work is so much more powerful when combining it with this alchemical power.

So many good points, I just love her comment about Rachel Yehuda's question about whether to treat the event or the person. I was healing my way through my trauma along this timeline and agree that the ultimate focus that made the difference was learning to love and forgive myself. ❣️🙏🏼❣️

Janina Fisher is tremendous at what she does. I wish all EMDR therapists understood this. If done badly nothing is more traumatic.

It is worth reading a long and brilliant, intuitive comment by Lawrence Duff which describes practical use of this therapy and perfectly described an inner child contact explaining my procrastination paralysis being caused by a horrific childhood torture experience. I was alone with my cat but this was good because I understood what was happening and cannot do this with a therapist. Fantastic to have it explained so well particularly the bit about it being self-limiting and therefore not a dangerous place to go. My “reliving” lasted about twenty minutes and because I have MPD from SRA and MKULTRA it was truly horrific but ended safely on its own and feeling so much better with cat therapy, Brad Yates emotional freedom technique EFT (and Brad mentions “parts” frequently in his outstanding scripts”), plus of course homoeopathy which is the answer to everything for my pets and I. Namaste 💜🙏💜

I am a brainspotting therapist and have found parts work unavoidable. I'm having to use the IFS principles with a number of clients and when they are in the area of the deep brain, it is truly amazing what actually happens.

I listened to Janina a year or more ago and found her approach to Dissociative Personality Disorders to be profound in that she viewed them differently from mainstream therapists. I felt that she stood apart from the Traditional Talk Therapists. I myself spent too much time working with traditionalists. The Mental Health Field will allowing be evolving and growing from new beliefs and ideas. Freud and Jung opened up healing; yet they were only getting us interested. Now, the healing field is Blossoming!

This is amazing and much more effectieve than traditional OCD treatment.

I’ve just started parts therapy to deal with abandonment trauma plus more, and so far, I’m so grateful for this work. I can how this could be life changing

I miss my mother deeply. She is gone since 2014. Dr. Fisher's voice alone comforts me- and, i wish to have this warm, kind type of feeling within myself. I have warm friendships. But, I don't have one strong caring individual for comfort. I have taken care of myself, my parents, my siblings since I was about three years old. I am independent, live alone. And, only recently feel like all those innate skills were used up too early without my own self, being cared for..or properly comforted as needed. Instead, I would comfort my parents in many cases.

I love Internal Family Systems and am doing further training in it now. So effective.

There is a brilliant comment by Lawrence Duff worth reading, must have been around February 2022, to which I replied because it was so helpful. ThankQ for this delicious interview and I will buy the book “Healing the fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors” when I get over my procrastination about doing anything that helps me get back into the world! Namaste 🙏

Much respect for this woman! ❤️ Thank you! 🙏

It helps if you have a child who you love or can show compassion for, then you can transfer that feeling for yourself as a child.

Loved the conversation here - the book from Janina Fisher they're referencing is one of the most useful books that I've read. I found it both intensely validating and enlightening. I had been using a somatically-driven parts-work approach for some time before reading it, and seeing great results. Fisher's explanations and case studies added extremely useful distinctions and helped me get a working understanding of how the structural dissociation model and IFS had overlap in practice, and how they naturally dovetailed with the neurobiologically-driven third-wave somatic approaches like sensorimotor or somatic experiencing therapy. I do sometimes recommend the book to clients as well as colleagues who want to both broaden and deepen their understanding of parts work.

This has really changed my perspective on healing. What a relief!

Commentator interrupted her (2nd time) with a big long thing at 35 min. He should have let her finish first. Just sayin’

Thank you for this beautiful video.

This is great information. I appreciate the distinction and clarity of identifying healing as getting the person to a point where they can accept, unconditionally love, and integrate all of themselves. That is the healing that Carl Jung spoke about.

Thank you for this video! Wonderful & a great healing approach

What an insight. Thank you for sharing this video!

Thank you for sharing your wisdom

Janina Fisher, Peter Levine, and other trauma experts are missing something very important, even crucial, essential for some of us, when they mischaracterize “reliving” as “retraumatizing”. If done correctly, in a safe setting that accommodates a full letting go, allowing the feelings, body sensations (somatic) to move freely to completion, resolution on their own, it is deeply healing. To explain what I mean (from much experience, my own and others) I have to go back to what the phenomena of trauma is in the first place. Trauma is an overload of pain, too much to experience to the point that, for survival of the organism, a child (or adult) dissociates, splits off, but the pain overload may continue. That unintegrated overload of pain is stored in the body and being, and will later rise to the surface when something similar to those early experiences happens (getting triggered), and if that rising trauma pain can’t be allowed to be felt and integrated, it causes great discomfort and requires dissociation of some sort; blanking out, addictive behavior of some kind, etc., whatever will temporarily create dissociation and relief from the feelings. So, understandably, as she says, when the person, perhaps through talking about their trauma (or something tied in emotionally to the original trauma) they start to get in touch with, feel what they dissociated from, the very real pain they lived through but split from emotionally, if those feelings, sensations are not allowed to flow to completion they will definitely leave a person feeling worse, unresolved, and a therapist who doesn’t understand what is happening might understandably call it “retraumatizing”. It is not, just a piece of that trauma pain that needed to be felt and integrated came to the surface, but didn’t have the right conditions to be allowed to do that, either because the person truly wasn’t ready, or the therapist didn’t have the experience and freaked out over the prospect of their client expressing truthful, raw trauma feelings. We (trauma survivors) have a deep longing to express the truthful, real reactions, spontaneous feeling responses (grief, anger, rage, even fear, terror) to what we lived through but dissociated from, but are also terrified of it, because when we first experienced those feelings, if we hadn’t dissociated, we literally might not have survived. But years later, with a safe distance away from those helpless childhood experiences it is safe as an adult, or can be if a person is ready, and a therapist, or facilitator is not afraid of the truthful, spontaneous expression of trauma pain, ideally because they have had an intimate connection on a feeling level with their own trauma pain. Importantly, ‘reliving’, a term used to describe regression, may not be the best description. It might be better described as ‘living for the first time’, or ‘re association’ because it is allowing into the consciousness a piece of what was dissociated from, what was lived through but not consciously felt at the time. And that ‘re association’ can be essential to reclaiming (piece by piece) our lost self, that we had to dissociate from. It was, and is for me, to become fully connected again to our feelings, as we were before the trauma happened. And importantly, and unknown apparently by most of the trauma experts, because they haven’t witnessed it with a client, or better yet, experienced it themselves; when a spontaneous full body and being connection with the trauma feeling is allowed to happen, the experience of the trauma pain is self limiting, doesn’t go on forever as people fear, but may come in multiple waves before coming to a resolution for the day. And with that full letting go, a spontaneous regression can happen, in which we find ourselves speaking/expressing in the vocabulary, and movements of whatever age the experience happened (as inner child), and expressing the truth of what we needed to express at the time because it was not safe, or we dissociated, or both. I remember in a Facebook trauma group, reading a woman’s account of her experience with Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing (SE), that she came directly in touch with her childhood anger, was ready to feel it, and her facilitator interrupted, stopped her and made her move away from the feeling, to use Levine’s ’titrating’, or ‘pendulating’ methods that she was trained to use. The woman was understandably pissed at being interfered with from simply being allowed to feel and express her feelings, because the facilitator couldn’t handle the expression of real feelings. Pretty outrageous. But for a person not ready to go to that level, to allow themselves to fully connect to their trauma feelings, and intuitively trust the process, these modalities like SE, Internal Family Systems, and others might have something to offer, to offer some safe space to begin the process of reversing dissociation, or ‘re association’. And I think, for the trauma survivor trying to heal, it's probably essential to have some experience of some real connection with a safe, reasonably trustworthy and compassionate validating person (therapist, mentor, 12 step sponsor) is needed, to begin to repair the attachment wound before much deeper emotional healing can happen. The therapy modality that probably best facilitates the direct processing of trauma that I wrote about is Primal therapy, but it is a natural process not exclusive or confined by any therapy.

thank you so much for sharing knowledge in such an easy-to-understand way

Thank you for this video. I'll have to look up that book now

Powerful interview. Many thanks to both the interviewer and interviewee!

Wonderful work, brilliant interview. Thank you so very much!

This is technique is beautiful .. thank you so much you are appreciated so much for the lives your emotionally healing.. ty again

Beautiful! I Never knew, thank YOU! signed a trauma home survivor.

Thanks for the link to her Trisha C; doable and less scary. I have strong movement impulses, and movement and dance and self compassion are all spot on. Namaste 🙏 and thanks.

Thank you for this lovely video! Seems like you have found methods that would also work well for pre- verbal traumas, - in that healing can occur without the need for words. Good job! Take care, and live well. CHEERs! :)

Her book is called Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors

I have watched many of these pieces in the various domains to seek answers, and it’s often the very subtle and nuanced expressions, as provided by the practitioners - rather than the broad, boldfaced points - which lead to breakthroughs for me. I truly appreciate the content and it’s availability; it’s perhaps not saved my life, but certainly enabled me to grow, heal and address this stuff and address this stuff piece-by-piece. And boy, did I have some tangles.

Sadly, those most in need of trauma- informed therapy cannot afford it; the disabled on Medi-cal, the homeless and disenfranchised ...those whose CPTSD has rendered them disabled... Most qualified therapists (phDs and even LMFT) don't even take insurance ...and are cash only!! 😓 It is a vicious cycle and mental illness persists... Only the affluent are able to get this help . This has to change..! 🙏 One should be independently wealthy to go into the field of mental health in order to help the most needy...🙏

Beautiful! I particularly loved Joanne’s account of her approach with the man fearful of germs, opening up a dialogue with his childhood self traumatized by the educational film on this subject during grade school. Her approach aligns with Steven Porges’ Polyvagal Theory as well - perceiving “cues of danger” in the film and “cues of safety” in the way he was guided to inspect the room in the present moment on behalf of the frightened child and embrace him in his mind, to the point where he felt relaxed enough to start feeling physically sleepy. Highly inspiring!

I too feel so much gratitude . ❤

Very interesting and important information!!

❤️thank you!!!

Brilliant woman!

Great stuff..ty

Gosh this is really really good!

I wish to recommend a book on recovering from trauma which is called Mental Liberation in the Age of Thought Control by Kerth Barker.

mindfulness - based concept: internal family systems (parts) in order to gain a connection to their young selves plus sensory motor psychotherapy: because we have to feel! that compassion in our bodies example: germophobia Can you contact that part of you that has such a fear of gerns? Notice that fear in your body. Is there an age that went with that fear of gerns? Ist there an image or memory that goes with that fear of gerns? (school video about the danger of gerns) Where do you feel this fear in your body? The key of this treatment ist the relationship of that 7-year-old with the grown up. Ask the little boy, what he ist worried about, when the grown up is touching the door knob. (little boy: danger!) Ask him, what he is worried about If he does something dangerous. (I' m afraid I'm going to die) - that's the traumatic fear What does the child part need right here, right now to not be so afraid? Would you be willing to show this little boy that you are willing to be very very vigilant? Look very carefully all around the office and make sure the he looks for every possible form of danger! ( the little one needs to be convinced that the adult is taking responsibility for watching out) little boy relaxes and starts to cry grown up holds the little one Ask the little boy how he is feeling. Good, but I dont know if I can trust you. You dont have to, I'll do it anyway. The trauma had developed because the 7 year old lived in an abusive family and he associated the fear of gerns with the fear he experienced at home. The missing feeling was being protected. And that's what you do during the treatment.

Patients are everyone. No one is free of trauma

She's amazing 👏🏻 😍 ❤ 💖

I don't understand how Am I suppose to forgive myself if I don't feel that I have to forgive myseld in order to heal.

So the healing comes just on discovering the systems that have been created and the relationships with the traumatic child event? What if you can't remember specific childhood events?

Janine are you taking Any clients on? How could so.eone who lives in Ireland get in touch with you?

amazing

Amazing content but the host needs to let the expert finish their point before jumping in to summarise. He was mostly right, but he spoiled the flow each time he interjected. He's anticipating her point (probably because he's read her material) and wanting to show off his knowledge, but spoiling it for me. His summary and his different choice of words would be useful AFTER she has finished her point.

What about the role of justice in this? Knowing that the perpetrator has not faced any consequences is surely a barrier to healing.

Can anyone confirm whether the book that Janina authored and referenced in this video is 'Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors' Janina Fisher. I really want to get hold of the one she speaks abou t in this video? She talk about the syntesis of sensorimotor and IFS. From the description of the above book it seems so but I would like to know for sure.

Can someone be fragmented and not have alters ?

Watching this part about germaphobia during the coronavirus pandemic like... maybe we all should have been a little bit wiser about how we spread germs without the phobia aspect?

Do you see patients online?

28:00

21 minute mark!

Fisher is off the mark in a couple of different ways here. First, trauma treatment is neither treating events or consequences of traumatic events. Trauma treatment is about treating people. People who have survived trauma come to therapy as individuals with different needs. Someone traumatized by surviving a horrendous house fire that kills a loved one may not need to reprocess traumatic memories or the specific event. A person who survived rape at the hands of a caregiver and who is subsequently told by multiple people that the violence never happened, that the client is a liar and so on, then it may be very important for that client to revisit specific events and to reprocess traumatic memories. So don’t look to treat events or consequences-look at the person first and listen to them and what they communicate regarding their needs.

As interviewers constantly do in their eagerness to do their job, they interrupt the momentum. I was waiting for her to continue with her story and he came up with the unnecessary "summary"!

There is a fundamental flaw to Dr. Fisher's work, and it comes in here at about the ten-minute mark where she talks about "restoring" patients. That's PTSD, not Complex-PTSD, not Developmental Trauma. We must stop conflating all trauma because the treatment plans are vastly different depending upon the developmental stage at which the trauma began. And note that I wrote "began", not "happened" - because complex trauma is, by it's nature, sustained over time. It's not a sexual assault that happened at the age of 30 - that's PTSD. Complex-PTSD is repeated, ongoing trauma that occurred during critical development of the nervous system, the brain, the body, the belief system, the very core of the child. The goal of restoring oneself to oneself is what healing would look like to someone with PTSD. In brief, PTSD is a failure of the nervous system to recover, while Complex-PTSD is a failure of the nervous system to develop. You can't restore something that you never had in the first place. So healing Complex-PTSD would mean having corrective experiences of those critical developmental stages. Firstly, it has to be relational. As the saying goes, if it's a relational wound then it's going to take relational healing. Secondly, it means that the therapist needs to act as a parental figure, Some would argue that therapists are, by their nature, parental figures but I would argue that, if that's the case, then they're dreadful parents and only serve to re-wound their clients. No parent worth her salt would sit across from a wailing 3-year old and try to expand his window of tolerance, or worry about tracking the rollercoaster of his emotions, or ask him to exaggerate his physical expressions. That sort of mindfulness is reserved for adults, not children. And clients wounded in childhood remain children and don't have the capacity for adult emotional depth or breadth so it's cruel to expect it of them. Therapists must model this behaviour for them. Unfortunately, so many therapists are too broken themselves to be able to give this kind of love. It's a shadow area of the therapeutic community that's so rarely talked about in polite company let alone out in the open for all to see. So let me put it plainly: Therapists are attracted to this field because they're still trying to resolve their own demons -- AND a vast number of them re-traumatize their patients throughout their careers. And Dr. Fisher is now giving us an excellent example of how this is done.

I wish Janina would actually train in IFS; she would understand then what a somatic approach it is, and how questions that she's saying here are 'from Sensoirmotor Psychotherapy' are actually classic IFS questions.

Please host stop interrupting!!!😢

Anger was more easily punished in my home growing up. Shame made you a good catholic and anger could be punished without remorse.

Man, the client who was a germophobe...I wonder how he's faired since the pandemic

Good. Probably could have been condensed into ten minutes.

she couldn't talk

Shes right but I can't tolerate her slow voice and the laugh after discussing something . It irritates me endlessly.

the mansplaining is annoying!

Psychotherapists are such a special group of people most of whom are really mentally Ill people trying to fix mentally Ill people with tools that are for the most part ineffective and very often retraumatizing for their clients and for themselves!