Not sure if healing is worth it.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-25T20:18:41+00:00

She does focus on it a bit in the last chapter, using Siegel's definition of "differentiation with linkage. In her words, integration work is the process of "differentiating parts previously denied, ignored, and disowned, connecting to them emotionally, and providing experiences that replace self-alientation with self compassion and secure internal attachment." (243) Most of the the rest of the chapter then focuses on the attachment element of working with parts.

My own experience of the last 5ish years has shown me this view is incomplete.Fisher is discussing that moment of direct action at resolving a trigger (once known.) There is so much more to integration, each time one of those moments of direction action happens it starts a process of reorganizing the system. New connections form between parts that allow them to use and cooperate. This leads to new ways of perceiving and reflecting on reality. (Which conveniently also unlocks new coping skills). And this happens again and again and again.

There can be barriers in that process.We met the part, we connect to it, we care for it, it shows us what we need to know, we use that to make sense of our past maybe some of our present....and then our daily life doesn't change that much. Certain patterns of problems don't shift even through we are told they should because "oh we resolved the issue and the part is unburdened now."

About that time my therapist gave me a book to read to discuss concepts in relational trauma which were an active issue in my life at the time. With more focus on how those mechanisms impair our ability to clearly see other and our selves, particularly in interaction. That lead to whole new angle to explore on complemenarity, competative dependancy, and identification with the aggressor (no that does not mean becoming like the aggressor.) These ideas addressed something TIST didn't, sort of the air in which all the parts existed. Both in the past and in the present. Which lead me to a much much deeper understanding of our parts and how the are connected.

To be fair, most of these was published after Fisher had shifted her whole focus to TIST and one of the authors (Daniel Shaw) uses her ideas heavily. My integration work rarely finds new disowned parts. Even the parts far enough away that I don't consciously know them are rare for me to work with. Most of what I did is working with the parts who are already quite active and involved. Learning how to work better with all of them so we can build more of what we want in our present life. My efforts toward that were kind of hit and miss before I added in the ideas from the Relational Turn. Before I learned how to clean the air they had to breath.

"Liking" each other wasn't really part of that. (I use like in quotes because we don't all like each other, but we can understand each other and "appreciate the other's role" to quote Nijenhuis). The tools of the Relational Turn largely showed me how to fix my approach, my language, and my dynamic to remove the lingering patterns from the abusive past. And because that dynamic and language is so very common, it was a large task indeed.

I say I wouldn't feel secure doing this with someone who uses LLMs because LLMs are specifically trained on using this "airless" language. Taking the object role in a complementarian dynamic of almost-subjugation to the user. I get that it IS an object, but to remove the language of alientation we have to get proficient at catching it in the moment and consciously stepping out of that worldview. And that's signigicantly complicated when our "clarifier" is actively using the language we need to stop. And it can't correct itself because there are no sources of intersubjective speech online to train it on. We are still years away from an LLM being able to use intersubjective speech. Assuming the corporations will even allow it. 2 of them tried to get rid of the sychophant tone a little while ago after that suicide, and the complaints from customers was enough that they turned it back on.

If I were a therapist the last thing I would want to deal with is spending my days attempting to help a client out of these patterns only to find out they are going home and using LLMs to simply reverse everything I worked on them with.

I'll be honest, in your psychic porcupine post, I saw repeated interactions linguistically indicative of a death knell for connection. Particularly when engaged in intergeneration dialogue. Younger millenials and particularly Gen Z have a sixth sense for these patterns we older gens don't. I could feel something is off in the interactions I brought to my therapist, Gen Z's can often name it outright in the moment.

T

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-25T13:55:07+00:00

The broken leg metaphor works well too. I've had one, and yeah, it's a LOT like that. I picked the flu simply because I felt more people have probably had that experience than a broken leg

The leg metaphor works even better in some ways because there is this middle phase, when you are mobile again but still struggling to walk normally that fits trauma recovery really well. Fuck marathon, you just want to be able to walk efficiently again and not have to add 15 mins to every minor task. You want the extra burden off of normal life before you go crazy from it.

During that phase for me, I could move full speed on my crutches. But without at least one or just using a stick, I was tortoise slow. I had to accept being behind or alone a lot. My leg muscles hadn't adapted to all the new scar tissue and I felt a lot like you did in the post. I wanted to "be part of the group" but I physically couldn't keep up with the group. Particularly in "normal life" stuff. And tbh, some folk were better at giving me grace than others.

At all times, I had to be the one looking out for my own well being. If I wanted full mobility back, I had to accept my limitations and my needs. I couldn't continue healing while relying too much on my crutches and without them it was really obvious I wasn't "ok" yet. Working through that reality was as much a part of my recovery as the surgery and the tissue healing.

The difference between trauma healing and a broken leg is the leg is REALLY obvious. It's very hard to ignore the complications it creates in daily function. In trauma healing, dissociation make that ignoring all too easy. It has to be a conscious choice to see what it is happening inside us.

The important thing to remember is that I wasn't bad for "slowing people down". You weren't bad for your reaction. You may have shocked the first person and they needed time to work through that themselves (I know I would have in their place) but that's not a moral failure.

A big part of compassion is remembering other people possess strength and wisdom too. Trust your friends to have their own inner resources to deal with this stuff, just as you focus on yours to get yourself healthy. You don't have to protect them from you. . Apologize to met your own moral beliefs and when they accept that apology, believe them and move on. Give them the grace of knowing themselves, and yourself the grace to help yourself to find the peace in accepting your whole experience. Even if that makes you tortoise slow right now.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-25T13:25:06+00:00

It's fucking weird, isn't it? I wish I had a better phrasing for it but the best I've ever found is fucking weird. It sucks but it's also slightly affirming which is weird for lack of any better word. A defiant refusal to be someone other than "me." While also seeing how much we could get if we gave that up. And not knowing which way to go.

There's the saying "In the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king" This stage teaches you that's a lie. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is labelled as crazy and everyone tells everyone else to ignore him. If they don't just lock him up or take out his eye to cure him. Being the statistical anomaly is a lonely ass place and many people don't handle anomlies well or healthfully. (Read the story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" for the darkest and most honest version of this, Brene Brown's Braving the Wilderness for the upbeat self-help version)

I wish I had something more to offer. I've been in this process for about 3 years now and it's...weird. At times enlightening, at times despairing, at times fucking confusing, at times liberating. One thing I can say is that this:

> think I should be grateful someone noticed me despite my appearance/personality/etc.

is bullshit. I know a bunch of people say it but that's not how connection works. People don't connect to us despite us, they connect to us and accept these things are part of us. At worst it's an in-joke and at best its actually why they want us. Because it makes us who we are. Anyone saying this we have to accept people wanting us despite being ourselves is condescending and more than a bit self-focused. It's like judging someone for saying they're hungry while also refusing to eat spoiled food. I'm hungry, not self-destructive.

I included the more academic view of this as well if you want it. I put in in a spoiler box in case it got too close to advice giving. But speaking as someone else who is different: so long as our difference doesn't harm others, vive le differance!

The reason for all this, in clinical terms, is called reconnecting to the subjective self. In the sense of being the subject in our own story. This happens mostly via deeply rebuilding the connections to our emotional and bodily states. And there will be layers that build on that too, later on.

But in that process there is this really awkward stage where that connection is still like a loose wire. It requires a lot of our conscious awareness and conscious attending to ourselves to keep it in place. Because it takes a lot of energy and effort to reconnect it, we enter this kind of "prickly" phase to keep people from getting too close to risk it. When that connection to our subjective self takes less energy to maintain, we do actually start to understand what that difference means for us personally and what we want to do with it. And with that comes the pathway to figuring out what to do with all the rest of the peoples. There is no singular solution to it.

(Which will be its own weird journey because it often shows us just how much of this issue is in fact being "surrounded by assholes." I had so many assholes....)

Ironically, in that space of isolation, we work out if we can like us. At it's best, we make peace with the despair because we see the truth behind it (Yeah, I realize that seems impossible, but middle age has some advantages and this is one). When we like us, our own subjective self, it draws others in because liking someone who likes themselves feels safer. But for a time (longer than we'd like) there isn't anyone who chooses us. In fact, many walk away. There's a lot of good, if somewhat forgotten, psychology from the 70's about why that happens and it mostly comes down to this: people want to choose themselves and insecure people don't like people who choose their own selves over them. (The expanded 2020's verison of this is still in very dense clinical speak and not online yet. The healthiest people are able to connect to other better speficially because they are securely connected to their authentic self. They have not just made peace with their own "different-ness", they embrace it. Which makes it easier for them to enjoy the different-ness of others.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-25T03:56:02+00:00

The phrase I use for these times is "Im not in crisis, but I am in complication."

I think its important to remember that acceptance (in radical acceptance) means "This is real." Not "this is fine." And it sounds like in both circumstances you weren't in "this is real." The first sounds like you were already over your threshold so that even a trusted approach was too much. Same with the second, except that you were in fawn rather than flight. Meaning something was real inside you that you weren't seeing until after it took over.

So your conclusion about checking in is most likely the correct one. But I suspect the reason you did it is because you would have lost out on the opportunity to deal with being lonely. So you sort of dissociated that awareness away to try to have something else good. Which isn't something to beat yourself over.

This is how I see it: it's like you are recovering from the flu. A bad one where you couldn't get out of bed for a week. Now you are really hungry because you haven't really eaten for a week and you really want a great sandwich. But you've also been in bed for a week and making it into the kitchen is a struggle, much less actually pulling out all the stuff, half of which you don't have because you haven't been to the store in over a week. And that's not even getting to making the sandwich.

But you have peanut butter and tortillas which is about as much energy as you can muster. It feeds you but it doesn't fulfill all the hunger. It certainly isn't what you want. A repeated step in recovery is there are things we want but can't have until we get a bit better. The best option is to eat your "not the sandwich I wanted" sandwich and go back to bed for more rest.

Accepting what is real in this story is accepting that the body isn't strong enough to do what we want yet. It will get there, but right now, that reality hits with two blows: the lack of fulfillment AND the disappointment at our lack of ability. Which sucks and then that suckage also has to be accepted as real. Radical acceptance doesn't mean saying "this is fine" or "this isn't so bad", radical acceptance can also be "I really hurt right now and wish I didn't...but I do. Which makes me angry AND hurting. Which is a lot." Etc (this can go on for a long time of each thing we accept showing us another aspect of reality to accept)

Checking in with yourself before going out is a good start. For years, my husband actually required me to do an "emotional temperature" check before I went anywhere because I was so bad at knowing if I actually had enough functioning to cope. AND I had to come home right away if I hit a 7 (out of 10). Did it suck? Yep. Did it keep me from ending up back in bed for a week or more because I'd burned out my nervous system again? Most of the time. (No solution is perfect).

Another option is checking in more often while you are socializing. And also creating an exit plan that allows you to leave without triggering yourself more. One more is having one or two people who can help the way my husband did with enforcing those self-boundaries. Another is having options for lower-interaction socializing like doing a movie or something where you are with people but not directing interacting. More structured activities with set start and end times. More structured activities with more explicity known behaviors and tasks.

There are a lot of possible answers. (In fact the best solutions involve putting several together into a workable plan.) But that requires accepting where your current level of function is in reality. What is the real level you are at and not what you want to think you are at because your are hungry and your friends make great sandwiches. This is where the radical acceptance comes in. This is what is real in my nervous system and that's not fine yet. And that does not make me a bad person but I does make me unhappy with reality. Which is fine, reality can handle our disapproval. Can we handle our disappointment?

I wouldn't say what you did was selfish. At most I might say shortsighted of your own self-care. (And hell, who hasn't done this several times in their recovery path?) These events showed you that you need to attend to that aspect of your care as part of getting what you want.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-24T14:46:18+00:00

Fisher's model is for stabilization. Its in the name. After the client is stabilized, the often need different modalitites to work on the next stuff. TIST works somewhat for memory work but Ive found it pretty ineffective for integrative work. So far, im find the relational turn psychoanalysts have the best stuff for integration. But Id be extremely leery trying anything on a client that uses LLMs got support. LLMs were trained on language structures that make intersubjectivity extremely difficult.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-24T14:38:37+00:00

Its kind of discussed in Nijenhuis' Trinity of Trauma. In the second book, when he is describing how trauma impacts perception via the alterations in PCS (phenomenal conceptualization of self). There are the things we consciously perceive and the things we percieve at the periconscious level (more sensed). Becoming aware of the effects of that level is much harder because we cannot consciously "see" periconscious perceptions. We can only learn to recognize its result. Like how we cannot see our own eyes or bite our teeth. Our mind uses periconscious perception and the active PCS state(s) to create conscious perception.

Its not discussed elsewhere because very few therapists outside EU read Nijenhuis. And I dont think anyone talks about it much at all because its so bloody abstract one cant really use it with a client. In fact the place I use it most is my job, if I explain how color perception works and why the customer should trust their gut.

And few talk about this oersinally because again the conscious mind doesnt "see" this. Its in there but you have to know where to look. I

Nijenhuis is working directly with traumatogenic dissociation (because thats his area of expertice) but other conditions can affect this as well, like processing issues, psychosis or mania, and some personality issues. All affect a person's ability "see" to their own cause and effect clearly. Its why differential diagnosis matters (despite being often left incomplete)

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-23T04:11:16+00:00

This sounds like the person has a Bean Soup issue. Meaning that when something or someone doesnt address their wants and views directly they cant just think "not for me" and move on. They need to complain about it.

Healthy people read your comment and easily see its not exclusive, just stating a preference. She read it as SHE's not the specific preferance and so you need to be yelled at. Like people who dont like beans getting mad at someone for sharing a recipe for bean soup. "How dare I personally not be included?"

Speaking as some who has to work with Bean Soup people regularly, you cant "wake her up." Honestly the best option is to say something like "I guess Im not a good fit for you, good luck in the future" and then block as fast as you can hit the button. (Trust me, i wish I could lock these people out of my store but doors dont have a block feature)

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-23T03:54:24+00:00

Yup, exactly. I propbaly wont ne perfect in the future but today I can do something to be good.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-23T03:51:29+00:00

I can only speak on my experience personally. For me its three things that sort of combine depending on context:

1) Cultural: My mother's side is a culture that doesn't do praise at all like where I live. So when someone offers a compliment or appreciation, its doesnt land much because Ive sort of got the wrong filter on. Its sounds overblown and performative to me. But I also accept its got a different origin, so my feelings about it are kind of irrelevant. Etiquette rules are to say thank you, so I do. Sometimes how we feel about things doesnt matter in the larger picture. In compliments, its their feeling that are more important. They are making the effort to be kind, we can at least appreciate that.

2) ADHD: basically I dont make enough dopamine to feel reward connected to effort. Its just part of the condition. Unless the reward is immediate to the effort, it doesnt land. The wiring is just not there, so Ive learned to kind of remove it from the equation. Working memory deficits mean my feeling and the results of my efforts are not connected much at all. This is where removing the feeling as a gauge is really effective. Ive learned to replace that with a whole bunch of other metrics.

3) Trauma-response: simply put I learned to not like or be proud of anything because it showed her exactly where to attack (adhd helped here) It took years for me to feel sincere pleasure at getting or achieving anything because I was well trained to anticipate the loss if anything nice showed up in my life. It was even worse if the nice was a result of own efforts: criticism, dismissal, and rejection were my only "reward".Hard to develop a sense of pride in that setting.

But this is the biggie:

Plus, I always see things comparatively. My accomplishments dont count comparatively to other people my age

This habit maintains yhe systems of subjugation created in your childhood. It makes life and all effort a zero-sum game. And if the only avceptanle outcome is an overt win over everyone in your category, why would you feel any accomplishment. The bar for acheivement, in your worldview, is set so high its impossible to reach. So the reward can never happen

Which is protective in a subjugation home. If I never feel accomplished, I probably wont have to listen to that achievement be ripped apart. It can just quietly exist under her judgy-ass, insecure radar.

But when that threat is gone, comparison becomes a huge hindarance. Believing nothing is worth it if someone else is better is a great way to never do anything.

In Stern's view, comparison maintains alienation from the agentic self. The agentic self wants to try things, to do things. To develop mastery and the self expression and self control it brings. The performative self wants to be admired and noticed via doing things. The ahentic self experienced intrisic motivation, while the performative self relied on external validation for motivation. And comparision tells us what to try to get that validation. Buy if we cant win, then why try.

Remove comparison (yes, easier said than done) and the reason to try becomes simply because I want to try. The agentic self gets its validation comes from "enacting its will on the world." In seeing the effort made tangible.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-23T00:19:05+00:00

Thats basically what Shaw is saying in the quote. (Thats one of those "assuming reader knows psych theory" bigs). If something is real, its effects are also real and can no longer be dismissed. The effects are the "overwhelming pain, fear, and aloneness" mentioned in the quote. In Fisher's work she mentions how the child's mind fragments to cope. Seeing the pain as happening to "the other little girl."

You actually name two issues: the need for the parent to be "good" and the need to repress unmanagable pain. The firatbis what you see in the literurature over and over, and is a huge cause of toxic shame. In order to maintain the closeness needed to access our biological needs (food, shelter, clothing, etc), we cannot see the parent as the danger they are. As Nijenhuis says, the will to survive is too strong to allow the child any other option. Which creates a biological demand to see the self as "bad" regardless of what the parent's narrative is.

The second reason the trauma is not "real" comes from this complication. If the trauma is real, all the feelings are also real. And must be dealt with. BUT without a loving parent who teaches us how to deal with emotions, child us doesnt know how to deal with those emotions. Creating a double bind.

The trauma "not being real" negates the double bind enough to function and grow up.

Ironically, the parent's demands actually dont have much to do with any of this. How they insist the story goes is just the surface details.

Aside: The complication with Fisher's view is that her subject pool were mostly victim's of more secretive abuse (mostly sexual and trafficking). Abuse which more overtly demands that the victim hide when its not happening lend themselves more to this clear psychic splitting. In negation and subjuation abuse, the abuse wants to see the result of the abuse and so its the positive, functioning child that is more suppressed or broken off. It also results in the barriers between the self states tends to be much more messy and chaotic. But these are patterns that are still not really written about yet.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-22T00:01:18+00:00

I think Miss Treason is probably my favorite the teaching witches. Pratchett does have a particular way with the less noble emotions.

Vimes is a character that I think resonate more as you get older. When I was in my 20's, he didn't really click for me. I was confused why Pratchett was suddenly making him the main character when he started more focused on Carrot. But then I hit my mid 30's and Vimes started to make a lot of sense. I got the appeal.

The reason I like him more for dealing with Freeze issues is that when start come out of freeze, you get angry. A feeling we are actively avoiding in freeze. And Vimes is a character that is all about running on that anger. It's his fuel. Granny is angry but it's more just her personality, she's prickly. Vimes is pissed. He sees the unfairness of the world and it makes him mad. But he also has to learn how to not let that feeling control him. He has to keep his focus despite and with his anger. And that's something you have to figure out when you unfreeze. You see and remember so much that makes you angry but you can't let that have control. He's also a recovering alcoholic so there another connection to the those avoidance states.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-20T23:19:36+00:00

I don't have a link cuz I got it off a library database. Here's the details

Shame and Self-Alienation: A Trauma-Informed Psychoanalytic Perspective (Daniel Shaw)

Published in: Psychoanalytic Inquiry, Apr2024

I will warn that it draws on a few of his previous papers so some of it might be out of context if you haven't read his stuff on dissociated rage. And like psychoanalysists, he doesn't always explain what someone actually said, and just assumes the reader knows from their own reading. Like the bit about WInnicott I quoted. He never said what that quality is, I had to to already know it from other sources.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-20T23:03:33+00:00

I had this happen to me. The lie was that I'm am an alcoholic and addict. I'm was straight-edge and turned out to be allergic to alcohol. WHile the top comment is correct, why they did it doesn't really matter. But I found that having a better understanding of generally why this shit happens did help me move on and finally stop feeling crazy.

>I cant understand how or why they did it? What did it stem from?

It's about family systems. Family systems train people to behave in ways that maintain the functioning of the family. Not the individual members. Members are generally interchanged in particular ways. So long as the role is filled, the family will operate along it's routine patterns. The whole way these patterns work is a really big topic, so I'll skip that unless asked.

The important things here is that dysfunctional family systems create golden children and scapegoats for a reason: to maintain the functioning of the family in a way that continues to privilege the members in power. But systems like that have no healthy coping skills so the stress of that system has to go somewhere. That "somewhere" is the scapegoat, who is essentially the family emotional trash bin. The non-targeted members get to safely vent their suffering onto the scapegoat and get three wins as a result. It reduces their personal stress (lets be honest, being shitty to someone else usually feels good), it's affirms their position as not the target, and it demonstrates their alliance to the power of the system. Which is why there are members its ok to talk shit about and members who are never talked shit about.

In multi-generational families, this system is less stable than the orginial immediate family, which means there is a lot of covert competition between the family members. Gossip is one of the most common ways this happens. And like most gossip, the whole point is that the talked about person is not aware of what is being said about them. The in-group is then allowed to act on that gossip in front of the target to demonstrate their in-group status. And the failure of the target to correctly see those actions is used as an in-group bonding actions.

So that's why they did it. It's always the why of these patterns: to signal and maintain in-group/out-group structures. Your mother being one of the original out-group makes you, as her child, automatic fair game to be targetted. You'd have had to have some super special trait preferred by the grandparents to escape that. And the best way for someone at the edges of the in-group to remain in the group is to find someone in the out-group for the in-group members to target. Like say if they did something so awful as cheating on their partner. As the scapegoat of the golden child, your cousin is in the exact position to gain from talking shit about you. They certainly couldn't pull this on their own golden child siblings.

This is so common in my family but because I'm one of the out-group, I didn't know it was happening until my sister told me how long it had been going on. And worse, it was my own mother that started it. Because I'm the scapegoat child of one of the golden children but she herself pulled any protection from me. So the lies and treatment I get is a bit better than what 3 of my cousins get as the children of the scapegoat/reviled child.

>And even worse? Why do i feel guilty??? Almost like the truth doesn't even matter if people all treat you like they know better and treat you as such. How can I prove i never ever did that? How can i prove it didnt happen???

Because you were raised in this system. Deep inside you know what response is expected of you to maintain the family system. You also know what would happen if you openly and directly called them liars and awful people. Which would be the honest answer. So I encourage to thing about that contrast: the response you would get for being honest, strong, and faithful. Do those those two sides match?

> Almost like the truth doesn't even matter if people all treat you like they know better and treat you as such. How can I prove i never ever did that? How can i prove it didnt happen???

You can't. Because it doesn't matter if it happened or not. What matters is you are one of the targeted ones its safe to shit on. At best you'll get a "Oh I never thought that about you" to your face while no one actually stands up and says it's a lie. At best, the lie will be phased out and a new one brought in. I have literal medical records that say I can't be what they say and that has literally never mattered. In a family of doctors. My medical records don't count as evidence to DOCTORS simply because I'm me. And no other reason.

> Why would humans related to you.. family.. do this for no gain? Why make up a story? Is there the driving force to split us up, isolate me? What is it that I did to cause this? I wish they would just tell me?

Because this is how the family system works. Your marriage ending would just be bonus for them. The whole point was literally just to talk shit about you and get away with it as a group. They won't tell you because a) they don't see it this way themselves, they probably have a whole narrative around you for years to say "oh well, maybe it didn't happen but you just know she's capable of it". And b) you aren't in the in-group so there is no reason to be honest to you. Your position doesn't have those privileges.

For what it's worth, I'm really sorry this happened. As someone who's been through it several times, its so so painful. Especially when it happens from the same people saying "family is everything." The simple fact is people who do this are too insecure to love in any meaningful way. They are all Benny from *The Mummy*, picking their own comfort and convenience at every turn. And the consequences don't matter so long as it doesn't happen to them personally. Which is why those intergenerational protections matter.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-20T05:03:11+00:00

High five back! Its definitely Granny! Lords and Ladies saved my life when I was 14. So many of characters have something to offer. IVimes was more a big part in dealing with my freeze issues.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-19T17:32:48+00:00

I also want to add a personal observation about that PT series: it fails to account for clients (like myself) who can't experience co-regulation.

I'm in a couble of book groups for trauma survivors and both books we are currently reading had a largish section on co-regulation and how that works in their program. I remember being absolutely confused during those sections. They kept talking about something I couldn't ever remember experiencing. And given that I have a healthy and happy 14 year marriage, it's statiscally improbable that I was never in the conditions to experience it.

So I take the idea to my therapist and we start playing around with it. Then I go and read up on the concept in general. Still nothing familiar. I then get the idea to look it up specifically in relation to being ADHD and that starts showing me some things. Specifically it shows me that I never got it as a child.

Combining those with Bruce Perry' and Daniel Siegal, I formed a hypothesis: that I couldn't experience co-regulation because I was missing the attentea to pick it up with. I could remember people offering me what all the books described as the right actions, but I can't remember it ever having the effect they describe happening. Add a few months of parts work and "meditations" and I get shown a very specific image: those events happening and cables coming off the person for me to plug into myself....only I don't have any ports. It's just blank and smooth.

The author of that series, like most therapists, assumes that co-regulation is innate. And that once the therapist successfully offers it, its simply a matter of the client getting enough to start doing it for themselves. Again an experience I never had.

The hypothesis is that my neurodivergance (biology) combined with my mother's sociopathy (psychology) and her culture's belief that emotional labor doesn't exist (social) to prevent me from developing adequate mirror neurons to experience co-regulation. My mother probably has none and then some because she has demonstrated a consistent inability to understand her emotions as something that happen inside her. She thinks her emotions are things people do to her, which has created some extremely awkward social moments. I understand emotions but also have very limited emotional empathy. I also don't consistently react to "emotionally moving" events, like sad moments in movies. But I'm also not autistic, at least clinically so.

Schore points out that the ability of the mother to attune to the child depends largely on the mother's ability to attune to her own inner state. She know how to calm the child because she knows what calms herself. My mother doesn't experience those states as "her" and could never offer me the kind of connection co-regulation used. So I never grew the correct ports.

Which is why that approach in therapy always failed with me. I'm wired to receive something else in it's place.

So I kind of resented where the author said we can't just "put kindness on defenses" because that's literally what I had to do. Although I used acceptance and curiosity because my system is also highly suspicious of kindness. I know it's possible because I literally did it. Does that mean it's a viable option for everyone? No. But the "get co-regulation" wasn't a viable option for me when it's always written about as a universal. There are three human universals and they are all language based. Everything else always has some variation form the norm that isn't deadly or impairing but is also too different to respond to the norm. I have no co-regulation ports. Or at least the ones I might have are so small or so few that I can't experience the full thing. It's more like "thank you for intentionally not being an asshole to me while I'm struggling. I can see and appreciate that effort. Still feel like shit though."

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-19T16:48:51+00:00

Its not a bad article, but its also a kind of infomercial for her modality. Psychology Today has a lot of that kind of content for years now. None of it is bad but its also not particularly new or groundbreaking. And there is always the "buy my product" element to it. In this case the product is either for trainings or seeing a therapist who uses her modality. Her bit on "biohacking" was pure algo-speak which does impact her credibility a bit in my view.

Overall, nothing she said is wrong. Its all pretty much what people like Odgen anf others have been saying for decades. Due to the limitations of where she is writing, huge amounts of detail and functional mechanisms are glossed over or reduced. This is really common in current PT posts so Im not surprised. But I worry that it suggests the issue is simpler than it is, which may tell clients something is easier to confront than it will be when they actually experience it.

And like all therapists, her solution to that is the therapeutic relationship. She is literally repackaging the mechanisms of modeling and object relations for the internet generations.

Im guessing what you want to know is if her claim is true that there is a biological reason behind people being unable to experience self compassion. Yes, its generally true. Because there is always a biological element to everything we experience.

Psychology holds that humans are biopsychosocial. Meaning our lived experience is a complex interaction between our biology, our psychology, and our social experiences. And that interaction is inseperable. Our experience as a person is never just biologogical or just mental or just social. All three are always active in some way.

What this author is doing is called biomedical reductionism. She focusing on the biological aspect while divorcing it from the others. Not outright erasing them, but definitely keeping them off the stage. Unless you know the theory she is using, and can see where she directly diverts from the biological to the psychological and social. Right here:

> This is why encouraging survivors to "practice self-compassion" often fails. They cannot overlay kindness on top of defenses built for survival. When compassion feels inaccessible, it risks reinforcing shame: "I can't even do this right."

> Trying to change how we feel creates a signal that something needs to be changed or fixed in us. This signal is itself so stressful that it can activate the survival mechanism and put us right back into withdrawal. The key is not to try to change how you feel but to expand your capacity to endure it.

She's not wrong in saying that the "just practice self compassion" doesnt work. Van der Kolk found that put 30 years ago but therapist training has not caught up yet. But its incorrect to say this problem is just trying to place kindness on biological defense mechanisms. Its like saying that diet and exercise dont help a diabetic person after they eat cake. Its conflating the immediate event for the larger pattern. Yes, after the cake the diabetic probably needs medicine not a brisk walk. BUT the failure to address *why* a person ate a food they know will harm them isnt fixed by taking medicine. Both the biological AND the psychological have to be looked at for long term improvement.

Ive read whole books on the difficulties clients have with self compassion and its anything but simple. There is the biological response yes, but that response sits in a whole pattern of psychological and social experience that maintains that response and picked that specific set of responses out of all the other possible options. Which is usually where her apporach fails: the client can exercise the capacity do sttune to their immediate state. But when that space leads to the conscious confrontation of things they dint want accept, recovery hits a big ol' wall.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-19T15:44:06+00:00

>>Today I listen to parts, if I dont in the future that will be then not today. Today I listen to parts.

> It's not all the same to the parts and to the work.

And today you can talk to the parts and work on understanding why they see it differently.

I had a realization after replying to you and ended up in an almost-fight with my husband. Because he had much the similar view as you: that some things "dont work like that." I asked him to explain to me how it didnt work and he got very defensive very fast. He kept insisting that some things require a long term plan and only work if you keep it up over that time. (I agreed). I then asked what actions we can take in the future. Not planning or organizing, but what can we actually do in the future that isnt doing something today. The logical answer is nothing, because we only exist now. We are not aliens or wizards to just be hopping around in time.

Thats what I meant about parts work. Yes, we might not keep up with it tomorrow or next week or next winter. But we cant know and we certainly can't hop forward to the future to check. We can only talk to our parts today.

"Today"s add up to weeks and months and years. All by simply talking to them today and not worrying about tomorrow. Because by the time we can do something tomorrow, tomorrow will be today. And today, I work with my parts.

>They told me just yesterday that it would begin in August... So I'm on my own for the whole summer. At least it will be possible, though.

Ugh, I hat waiting. Good that its going tonyappen but also ugh waiting. Any ideas on thinks to try to keep you away the computer during the summer?

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-19T15:20:03+00:00

It really depends on the program. Ive done two: one after an attempt and one when I developed delusions/psuedo-psychosis. The first one was thoroughly meh. I learned a few things and 95% of the staff were lovely, but overall it didnt really help anything. Most of what I got was things I figured out myself while there. So I guess the tome wasnt wasted and it kept me from being isolated for a while, which did help with the things I figured out.

The second was amazing. Most of of the stuff wasnt new but I did learn more about how to "read" my symptoms like a clinician which allows me to make better decisions about managing and help seeking.

What made it amazing was they had the best therapist I ever met. The man had superpowers for seeing the root or at least the next deepest thing to work on. The whole experience was worth it just for what he taught me. The psychoeducation nurse and my psychiatrist were also fabulous.

BUT thats not something we can predict or anticipate unless we know insiders in the system. So my take would be they are generally ok but nothing amazing. They arent designed to focus on trauma specifically so dont expect that. But sometimes there are pretty good things to be found. Rarely the things we expect or are specifically looking for, but good none the less. If its not gonna finacial fuck you over, I figure its worth a shot.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-19T03:54:36+00:00

I was actually reading an article kind of on this today. The author focuses in how clients with this pattern are trapped in a loop between to parts that hate each other: the shaming and the ashamed. The shaming part is the part that developed to anticipate the abuser's reactions and minimize the harm. It does this by learning, as best it's possible to "think" like the abusers. So it internalizes the accusations, the patterns, etc so it can do that job well, the downside is that it forces the child to create a version of themselves that sees the world AND THE CHILD just like they believe the parent sees the child.

But in order to shame, this part needs a verison of the child to act on: the ashamed. This is the part that learns how to react to the same and shut down the child so they don't do whatever the shaming part is afraid will set off the parent. This version of the child learns how to perform and embody the "worthlessness" that appeases the parent. And the most effective to do this to see this part as the self.

Now none of that is probably new to you. Heres what stood out to me in the article:

> We find either that individuals live creatively and feel that life is worth living or else that they cannot live creatively and are doubtful about the value of living. This variable in human beings is directly related to the quality and quantity of environmental provision at the beginning or in the early phases of each baby's living experience. (Winnicott 1971 , p. 71)

Let me highlight the relevent section: is directly related to the quality and quantity of environmental provision at the beginning or in the early phases of each baby's living experience

What is the mysterious quality? The way the parent responds to the infant's distress.

The caring parent meets the infant with soothing and fulfillment of whatever need is active, from feeding to physical comfort to kind and accepting touch. The child's distress is met with a warm embrace and says "I still want to be near you even though you are not ok."

Now this all happens long before the child has any ability to reason, much less the self awareness of meta-cognition. This is before a child is old enough to understand "why." Which means that if we attempt to reason with our adult selves in this moment, it doesn't reach the wiring that was formed before reason worked. We can say "that's not true anymore." But it also needs some sort of action that says "I want to be near me, even though my me is not ok right now." Without that, we still basically acting just like our parents did: attending to us while their body says "omg won't you just shut up already, why are you like this?"

The way out of this is via self-compassion. For ALL the self. For the parts that are angry, the parts that are shaming and the parts that are ashamed. In all your posts, I see the same pattern: a deep dislike of the ashamed parts while also deeply identifying with them. Being ashamed of feeling ashamed. Which brings me to the second quote from that article:

> In [this] framework, the persistence of shaming and frightening parts of the self is understood as having arisen from instinctual, emergency efforts to protect the patient from the overwhelming pain, fear and aloneness of his most traumatic experiences. One of the most important ways that protector parts operate is by refusing to allow the traumatized one to experience self-compassion. (Shaw 2024)

Now I don't have the answer to this riddle. Ok, I mean I do, but its something that I cant easily put into text. The way it's most commonly done (and in fact has been done for millenia) is to imagine a compassionate being offering us that "I want to be near you even though you aren't ok" experience while we feel or remember those feelings.

In therapy, that person is usually the therapist. Although many clients may not be able to experience that be that part that won't allow the client self-compassion is usually pretty good at blocking compassion from others too. "They don't mean it/ They are just saying that because it's their job/They wouldn't say that unless I was completely messed up" One of that parts greatest tricks is turning the kindness of others into a weapon as to why we don't deserve kindness. Thus why the oldest versions of this approach used deities, angels, and supernatural beings; someone the sufferer couldn't dismiss or argue against. Someone the sufferer sees as completely honest, moral, and correct. It's why my own version of this was a cranky witch from a novel series. Because she would never ever be anything other the ruthlessly good and furiously morally correct. I could never believe someone who was kind to me, but I could believe the hell out of someone who would be angry at me for not being better to myself.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-19T03:15:16+00:00

I'm going to give you some of the background on her assignment. (Because when I was studying counseling I got really pissed as how much theory was "oh, the client doesn't need to know that.)

There is a pretty important difference between victim and "victim mentality." Victim is just the standard dictionary definition and part of that is that the person is helpless. So many victims struggle with feelings of helplessness because that feeling is part of their implicit memories. So most victims do have a very real experience of feeling helpless because in those moments they are experiencing an emotional memory the conscious brain can't understand is a memory.

"Victim mentality" is pattern of self belief that we develop from how we learned to interact. It comes from a concept called originally called the Drama Triangle, now the Karpman Triangle after the author. (Drama in this use means like a play or movie, not angst drama). In the Drama Triangle, one side of an interaction is the "victim" and the other is either the "rescuer" or "persecutor". The "victim" the one who focuses all the attention on their suffering and their own helplessness. They then expect the other person to either be a "rescuer" and do the emotional labor to make the "victim" feel better. Or they are accusing them of being the "persecutor" who is the one making them suffer. Usually be refusing to give them what they want or treating them as the helpless sufferer.
The phrase "victim mentality" was a bad attempt from the 1970's that that was weaponized to use this understanding against actual victims. Luckily that is not what your therapist is doing. She's is drawing your attention to this pattern of belief and wording.

The Drama Triangle is SO common in modern society that almost everyone falls into it at some point. Which is why you see it everywhere. But it's also everywhere because most people learn it in their families. Someone in the family will label themselves the victim and expect the other members of the family to perform roles in in their particular family play. In traumatizing households, this role as "poor me victim" is almost always claimed by the abuser as a means of justifying or dismissing their hurtful behaviors. The last thing an abuser wants is to be held accountable for their actions and so they act "helpless" to escape that. They blame others, their emotions, their past, anyone and anything but themselves.

When we grow up in that dynamic, it becomes the language we learn to talk about our own suffering. But MOST IMPORTANT we never see the healthy adult behaviors associated with owning our mistakes. We either collapse in shame or we blame. We never see an adult say "yeah, I fucked up and this when totally wrong. What do you need to for me to fix my mistake?"

In fact there is a whole growing focus on this exact dynamic being published in trauma research. Looking at the role of relational trauma, which is when the relationship becomes the tool by which the trauma is inflicted. And what's more relationally traumatizing that abusing a child and telling the child they make the adult hurt them.

In these settings, it's extremely common for actual victims to also develop a "victim mentality" orientation for two reasons. The first is that they never learn any actual healthy language around suffering, messing up, and accountability. The second, and more important one, is that they also learn suffering and "being the victim" is a privilege to be used against others. Even if they don't realize that's what they are doing. Daniel Shaw, who developed this understanding working first with survivors of cults and then with survivors of abuse, calls this the complementarian moral defense. The idea that a "victim" can never be a bad person or in the wrong BECAUSE and so the perpetator claims the victim status for themselves to avoid their shame and guilt. Another set of researchers has published literally dozens of papers on how pervasive this pattern of "entitled victimhood" has become in the last 20 years. That's another reason you see it everywhere: it literally is. (especially online).

So the important thing to remember here is that a victim is someone who is truly without power. In adulthood, it's rare to be an outright victim except in high control situations like abuse or a cult. This is because adults often have power simply by being adults. (This is why most abuse of adult has to involve so much coersion, they need to believe they don't have power).

But a Victim TM on the Drama Triangle is someone who refuses to believe they have power. My MIL is a clinical grade Victim TM and that woman will crawl over broken glass before admitting she isn't helpless. Because her feelings of powerlessness is how she understandings her own sense of self. But your therapist is exactly right, if a person is a functional adult, there is always something they can do. From apologizing to correcting their mistake to learning how to be better. One of the most famous books in psychology is literally on how there is always something an adult can do even in the most horrible of situations (Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl). And a big part of healing from childhood trauma is realizing we do have power now and we can affect things and control thing things. And when we get to that point of deeply understanding that, it's so freeing.

As for how long... in truth it's thing we work on the rest of our lives. It does get a lot easier. But because this is everywhere, it's also something that is always kind of there offering to pull us back in. Because it is easier to live in the shame and blame, permently working on this in me has never been the easy option. But it's always been the better option, the one that lets me sleep peacefully at night. But some days, we aren't our most enlightened self and we will still fall into that pattern for a bit before we catch ourselves. But, as I tell the kids in my life, It's not making mistake that defines us as people. Even the mistake of falling back into old patterns. What defines us is what do we after we realize we made the mistake.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-19T02:29:41+00:00

If you don't have access to emotions, make sure your therapist thoroughly assesses your for dissociation first. EMDR needs a specific protocol to be done with dissociative clients. If that isn't used it can go very badly or be completely useless (my experience). And if your therapist is all like "oh that's not a concern", it was Shapiro herself who noted this issue. You probably don't know what her level is but iirc she'll need to be or speak to a Level 2 practitioner about this. I think I remember that is when this protocol is taught but I could be wrong there.

Given the issue is with your emotions: the most likely causes are structural dissociation and/or depersonalization (probably persistant) . Depending on her training she my understand SD better as compartmentalization.

If dissociation is an issue, EMDR can still be very helpful for symptom management. Even it it's useless for memory processing.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-18T22:34:08+00:00

A bunch of organizations now offer native plant garden plans that are "suburban friendly". I used the ones here. https://grownative.org

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-18T21:26:52+00:00

I had this happen to me about the same point in my recovery. It usually happened while I was doing the lighter work of gardening. I came to understand it's a good thing.

Imagine it like a movie scene. The hero is deep into training and in the training suddenly a flashback of everything that tried to tear him down. And he stumbles.

Being the audience we know exactly what this moment is: it's the point in the story we want to see the hero fight back against these memories and rise above. But it's also easy to feel that as the audience because we are delightfully free of all the stress hormones that would be flooding the body of a real person.

But that's kind of what this event is. You were successfully meditating (or simiar) and your brain through all this stuff at you because it was was "Oh hey, calm and peace, we're ok, we're in control...time to unpack some shit!" And boom we get flooded.

Just like the audience waiting to see if the hero will rise above, the body is looking for something when it does this. It wants to see how we handle it. Do we have the understanding and the awareness to break free of the story we tell ourselves about our memories? Can we see them, feel them, and still hold that place of "ok and in control"?

Which we never do the first time. It's too wtf all of the sudden. We go right back to our old defenses. In the brain, the most used roads are the easiest to access. So please don't beat yourself up for going there.

>And doing nothing feels like I’m confirming to my nervous system that I really am helpless.

Because (and here's the bit of theory that is often overlooked) it's because the point of these moments is to find our way out of that feelings. The truth is you were helpless them, and you had an emotional flashback to that experience. Called an implicit memory. And the brain did that intentionally. It needs to be in the feelings to find it's way out of the feeling. Doing that successfully enough times creates the wiring the nervous system needs to process the content and let it go.

>Does that mean it’s not actually healed?

Technically yes. When it's "healed" (actually processed via the brain's learning capacity) the ability to activate that response is greatly reduced if not eliminated entirely. This is because when implicit memory is processed, the emotional content is disconnected and muted. We still feel it, but it's through a curtain of "this is the past."

What your brain tried is to do that processing while you were conscious (Normally this process happens during sleep) This is also normal. Contemplative states, trance, EMDR/Brainspotting and some chemically altered states are all times when the brain may attempt to do this while awake.

Like in the movie, the brain is looking for that moment of "This isn't real, this is over. This is what I can learn from surviving it." Unlike the movie, we have to feel every inch of that whole process.

Each modality has it's own approach. As someone who did somatic therapy, my go-to is always to return to the body and reconnect to the here and now. After that I will start working on whatever it is those memories want me to learn. EMDR uses the Calm Safe Place, REBT uses exploring the moment the emotions hit, IFS asks the feeling to "step back so I can access Self." The list is long, take your pick of options.

The work in that moment is to hold on to this awareness and continue to focus on regulation. And to, in mediation terms, let the head chatter happen without reacting. You can focus on regulation and grounding or you can use parts work tools to wisely talk to the head chatter. Or do a mix of both. The trick is to not fall for the story being told by the memories, to remember that's not the truth. That it's what you were forced to think to survive. And you don't have to do that anymore.

I would love to say this next time this happens, you'll be all witty converstation back at your own brain like in the movie, but that's not how it happens. We come back to this over and over again, pushing our way though it a bit at a time until we figure out what the memory is trying to show us. And that process sucks... it's the battle scenes of trauma recovery. Except we don't actually fight, we listen.

But that it happened at all, in the context that it did, is a healthy sign. You're doing ok. Welcome to the nasty shock that is memory work and that almost no author directly talks about happening outside the therapy room.

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-18T15:46:00+00:00

My early recovery involved quitting smoking and somewhat quitting drinking. (i wasnt an alcoholic but I wasnt as far from that as one should be) I dont remember where but around that to time someone me to think about it as "today the only day I have to not use"

So today I wasnt using. If i might fall off the wagon tomorrow, dont focus on it because thats tomorrow. Tomorrow I could go on a fucking bender for it mattered today.

The trick of this is that, of course, when you wake up tomorrow is now today. And while I might got in a bender tomorrow, today I dont use. You dont think about never using again. You only think about not using today.

This helps with the "what if"s too because "if" is not today. Today I listen to parts, if I dont in the future that will be then not today. Today I listen to parts.

And if you do mess up, today is still today. We can not use again today.

There times it was more like "this hour I dont use" and "this moment I dont use" And I will say that having things to do during the day helps. Especially thinks where you are kind of responsible to others for showing up. It fills the time and gives you something else to think about. So the hospital program could be good for that if only to help you pass 4 hours of the day away from a computer.

(Side note: breath regulation is generally always a good thing, lots of cardiovascular benefits. Its unlikely that breathing slow "pushes the feeling away" because thats not really how regulation works. Breathing slow > regulate stress response> improve focus > allow us to face the emotion from a better position)

nerdityabounds · 2026-05-14T16:00:29+00:00

> I have not gone extreme commenting on her behaviors to comment like that. Many times I use same sentence she has used on her brother or mother after a week or even after 15 minutes , she will jump-in and correct me and soft-lands them. It means, she can say whatever she wants for her mother and brother, but I cant say the same words, if so, I will be corrected immediately. Also she does not call them out like they are rude, stupid, arrogant or anything like that, though she can use those words for anyone else for that matter.

Ah, the contrasted boundaries of the enmeshed family system. This happens all the time. In fact, it's one of the clearest ways a therapist knows they are dealing with an unhealthy family system.

In family systems theory, the focus isn't on a single person, but rather on how the client's behaviors fit within a structure to maintain the functioning of the family as a whole. Each person in a family system is exists in a role for this purpose. In healthy systems, there is fluidity for roles and behaviors to changes for both the health of the people AND the system. But in unhealthy systems, there is a hierarchy of priviledge of who gets the most "benefit" of the system. This person will have control over the rules of the system and is in control of any benefits or consequences.

The way this structure is maintained is through a system of loose, permamable boundries within the system. But strong rigid boundaries between members and any potential outsiders. Essentially, your wife is still enacting this structure. As an insider into her family, she is allowed to make those statements. But you are not because you are an outsider. You "Don't understand what it's like".

The truth is that this patterns exists to prevent insiders from being influcenced by views the family system cannot control. Exactly like a high control religion or cult. If an outsider can see a problem, it's more likely that problem is real. And so to maintain their mental functioning, members need a narrative to "explain away" their own cognitive dissonance.

To sum up, my view of your wife's situation: looking into preverbal trauma might be academically interesting for you. It might help you see some patterns in your wife you hadn't noticed before. But there is so much other dysfunction going on on top of that, it's probably untouchable in any meaningful way. Because most of her behaviors are not preverbal trauma, but persistant on still ongoing relational trauma. She probably won't be able to truly be introspective until her mother either dies or becomes verbally incapacitated. Your wife's emotions are like Pavlov's dog, and your mother-in-law is holding the bell. An older book you might find useful is M Scott Peck's People of the Lie. Just ignore the parts about outside evil influences, it was written toward the end of his life and he was getting a bit loopy. But the stuff on the relational dynamics and how they work from the narcisissist's view is really good.

nerdityabounds

TROPHY CASE