Note that this discusses violence (mugging) and other aspects of trauma and may contain possible triggers. It's a five part series with the first video being here: http://youtu.be/JY3pjiX13M0

When I watched the end of the last video I got pretty triggered myself because he talks about going through a phase of merging and intense dependency while learning to regulate your nervous system through attunement. I'm pretty sure this is exactly the kind of phase I was going into with ex-T just when everything fell apart, and I think that's a large part of what made it so incredibly painful.

Alpaca,
Thanks for posting this! I only watched the first one and it was interesting to see how we take on different roles. Also, watched some of the shorter ones and I will watch the rest in the series you were talking about. It's easy to get triggered thru things...it happens to me all the time so sometimes I have to back myself away but it definitely gives us awareness and a sense of 'normalcy' I think but takes time to take away the pain. I hope your pain about your ex-T lessens soon.

Treat yourself well.
Hopeful

Hey Alpaca,

I'm just about half way through the first part, but I have to stop for now because my daughter woke up from her nap and wants me. Fascinating stuff, though! Just wanted to say thanks for sharing the link. I look forward to getting back to it later today.

Alpaca,
Thanks for the videos, I've listened to the first two parts so far, and as far as my experience is concerned, this guy is dead on. I really enjoyed identifying procedural roles that I take on as well as my family members. Very illuminating stuff.

AG

Have listened to three so far and find it really interesting, especially the procedural roles like AG and also integrating event memory across multiple roles. Thanks for sharing! He doesn't sound at all like my T, but there are a few things that remind me of my T, so I probably am going to get friggin' youtube transference, LOL.

Hi Alpaca,

Thanks for posting. I watched all five and developed positive transference for that man in the first video. Those eyes. That smile. I'm going to the love and trauma center! LOL!

Liese

It was good! I took notes.

I see myself in all 4 of the patterns, but mostly the "distancer".

What? Me attach? Hell no! Um.... yeah...I do. wait a minute... yeah. Damn. Oh, no.

Memories? Yikes. Talk about filling in gaps.

I don't quite understand the part about "not buying" what the client says. It got me thinking that life/truth is just an illusion anyway. Is there really an essential truth? Is the T even trying to get at the "truth"? Brings out the philosopher in me, for sure.

Number9,

Life feels like an illusion a lot for me. It's very scary sometimes.

When he made that comment about not buying into it, I thought he was referring to the fact that the T shouldn't play that role that we expect them to play. Like, he's a natural caretaker and if he has a victim sitting in front of him, it would be comfortable and easy for him to take care of the victim and comfortable and easy for the victim to be take care of. The victim is saying, I can't take care of myself and the caretaker is buying it, and taking care of them because that's what the caretaker is good at, then the roles just get reinforced and the victim never learns to take care of themselves.

And then I was thinking about my life and how how it has been and how I see people and how I see myself. Of course, he has to validate all that. It would be awful if he said, well people aren't bad and they haven't hurt you, because that isn't true. But, on the other hand, the more I develop a positive sense of self, some of those things might change as well.

Did what he said have any meaning for anyone else?

So if what he is saying is that the things that happened to me are true, but when I say that "people suck" or some variation on that theme, that is what he says not to buy, then that makes sense.

That does help

I would like to hear other takes as well.

Yeah, that's kind of what I got from it. That the client will have beliefs about life, such as "Other people can't take care of themselves," or "I'm a worthless person" or other beliefs that are really limiting. And the T on one hand has to empathize with the reason why these beliefs have seemed true to the client, and that the beliefs represent their experience of life up to the present. But at the same time, the T has to be willing to challenge those assumptions in order to hold some space for the client to experience things differently in the future and take on different roles. It's like saying, "I know you've felt worthless your whole life, and I know that people did things to you to make you feel that way, but I'm not going to believe that you are worthless just because you're acting like it right now and trying to convince me of it."

Does anyone else think he's attractive?

I watched the series last night - very interesting. Theory stuff always triggers me but I was kind of already triggered last night so this worked to calm me down a bit. My T is definitely an artist when it comes to working with transference because that T was talking about how long it takes to learn, etc and I know my T has deeply engaged my patterns on many levels while not really joining my storms.

It also gave me an interesting way to view my family of origin with the procedural roles. I could identify mine and my perception of their roles very clearly.

LOL, Liese! Way to focus on the most important part of this video

I guess I found him more intellectually than physically attractive, but I'm sure if he were actually my T, I'd definitely get tons of positive transference for him anyway.

Alpaca,

I really enjoyed the video on an intellectual level but looking at him didn't hurt.

LOL!

quote:

Does anyone else think he's attractive?

*raises hand and grins*

I'm way too young for him, though.

I finished watching the series this morning and it was actually very illuminating for me. I started musing about the idea that the event memories of a particular trauma of mine may have formed themselves into a kind of emotional template that has determined to some extent how I see and experience the world. Once I had that thought, the connections kept coming and I saw how I had those same dynamics playing everywhere-- in my marriage, my relationship with my parents, church, even God sometimes, in how I think about doctors, therapists, policemen, the government. I had no idea it was this far reaching! But it made so much sense of a lot of my craziness. I spent a lot of my session tonight talking about this with T. She agreed that trauma does change the brain and that the connections I was making all seemed to fit with my experience. I'm glad that the video was so hopeful, though, about our ability to loosen ourselves from those rigid procedural roles and attain greater fluidity and creativity. I'd hate to be stuck like this forever.