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Thanks for joining me for the read-a-long of The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma. This week we’re exploring the end of chapter 2 (all things disidentification) and Chapter 4 - the power of asking exploratory questions and drilling down into our own experiences! You can join at any time, even if you aren’t currently reading the book - I’m here to recap and break things down for you so you can take this and apply it to your life.

Transcript below:

Hello Book Club and welcome back! Super excited to be moving through The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma together.

I'd love to hear from some of you what you have been curious about as you've been doing the reading, and you're more than welcome to leave a comment here or just reply to this email- it comes straight to me. I'd love to feel the connection with each of you as we're undertaking this process together because this book is so rich and so deep that it's so important to hold the container together of knowing that we're in this together- we're learning and being curious as we go along.

Something for me, as I've been rereading this book that has really stood out, is that process of dis-identification. We talked a little bit about this in our last meeting together, but it really, really stood out to me about how impactful and how big that dis-identification process is and can be. We talked last week about that pillar one model of NARM called clarifying the therapeutic contract. What that pillar really represents is connecting you to your agency and what you want for yourself.

An experience that I had in my own therapy when I started NARM long ago was how much I hated doing that. And what I didn't know at the time was that I have a really, really strong part of me that wants to push against autonomy and agency. Part of my predictive adaptive patterns were around protecting me from having wants, having needs, and wanting to be a separate and individual person from those around me. Clarifying what I wanted for myself really hit upon this part of me that was like, oh my gosh, that is a huge thing to let myself figure out what I really want. And that might sound kind of strange because if you knew me, you would know that I'm a very achieving, moving towards goals type of person. But what I didn't realize is that a lot of what I was achieving and moving towards was what I thought other people wanted from me. I didn’t have a deep, genuine sense of connection to that desire of what I really want, what I value, how I want to live in my life.

And so whenever I would come up against that therapeutic contract, when I was in training for NARM and doing my own NARM therapy, I would feel a sense of anger of why is this therapist trying to put this back on me? Aren't they here to help? What I was able to realize is underneath of that anger was a strong sense of fear and deep sadness that I had spent a portion of my life trying to make others around me happy. There was also a part of me that was so deeply exhausted from having to juggle everything all of the time to make others around me happy and keep going and keep achieving. I wanted someone to do it for me. I wanted someone to tell me what I should be doing and what I wanted for myself.

What I love about this model is that it's so deeply non-pathologizing- that I was never made to feel like there was something wrong with me for not being able to get clear about what I wanted for myself, or what I needed in my life or in relationship, but rather the support to come into my own capacity and to start to dis-identify or un-blend in internal family system terms from that old predictive pattern that said it wasn't safe to have wants and needs and to not take care of everyone around me.

But that dis-identifying from that people pleasing, perfectionist, intellectual part of me was a pretty intense process, and it took time to start to recognize that wasn't actually me, but rather that predictive, protective part of me. Maybe several parts of me, as I thought, surely those are adult parts of me. They want to achieve; they want to set goals. They want to take care of others. I'm a really caring person, and a lot of times I'll joke with the clients I work with that it sounds like an adult, but if you really look underneath it, what you feel is that there's sort of three child consciousnesses stacked on top of each other wearing a trench coat. And that was definitely the case for me, as I was able to slow things down and feel all the fear at dis-identifying from what I thought was my identity.

Then I could start to come into true connection to myself in my own capacity. I wanted to share that story with you all, because I know sometimes these concepts can be sort of clinical, and I think you'll really enjoy towards the end of the book where they intersperse little therapeutic conversations, but that this is real and can be impactful in our lives in such a positive, empowering way. That we can dis-identify from these old patterns, that these predictive patterns are not part of our identity, but rather a suit of armor we put on to try to stay safe and stay in connection with those around us.

Just to be clear, it doesn't mean that I might never have a little people-pleasing or perfectionist strategy pop up, because we know that these protective strategies are always there for us when we need them, not when we want them. And that's okay. Many of us may still be in situations in our lives where it's not fully safe to be 100% ourselves, and that's all right. As long as you have the awareness of your agency and flexibility to stay on your own side and continue to feel the sense of safety in whatever way it's available, that's what is really valuable. So let's dive into pillar two together.

This is one of my favorite things about NARM is the emphasis on curiosity. And if you know me in real life or you've ever worked with me, you will never hear the end of the word curiosity. In fact, one of my friends gifted me with a little resin stand that says be curious because they've heard it from me so much, and the power of curiosity and getting underneath our experience- it's just one of the most valuable things we can do. And it reveals so much without having to try so hard. It’s really important to understand, here's a little overlay with how our nervous system works, is that our survival system - many people think about it as an alarm system, but really it's a novelty system. And so what that means is it's not just looking for things that are scary, it's also looking for things that are novel or different.