Building Relationship With Your Parts

In this clip, Janina Fisher explains how the distress of everyday adult life differs from the distress carried by traumatized parts—and why building relationships with those parts brings relief. She shows how learning to notice painful emotions as belonging to a part allows empathy, compassion, and care to emerge, rather than overwhelm.

Through Trauma-Informed Stabilization, Janina illustrates how staying with a suffering part becomes a reparative experience, helping survivors recognize both the pain and the survival wisdom their parts carry.

Transcript

So, The book is written in the same order in which a therapy journey would take place, Beginning from just getting used to the idea of being fragmented, Learning to recognize the signs that say, Oh, This is about parts, Being able to notice the parts. And, You know, That word notice probably appears hundreds of times in this book, Because noticing means that we are using the resources of our brains to overcome the way our minds were adapted to trauma. So, Let me give you a little tour of the brain. So, This, Well, The left brain, We're all familiar with the left brain, Because the left brain is the part of the prefrontal cortex that has language. This is the part that puts words to our experience. A very important part of the brain for all of us. It's also the part of the brain that remembers the multiplication tables, That can remember how to get from point A to point B, That remembers that we have an appointment. All those kinds of things are what the right brain, The left brain is good at. The right brain is all about feeling and sensing. It has no language. It has the ability to read body language, Facial expression, To sense danger, Or to sense safety. But it can't evaluate whether indeed it's safe. It all goes by feeling. And then we have this area here called the medial prefrontal cortex. And that part of the brain is the mindful brain. It's the part of the brain that can observe whatever is going on in the rest of the brain, What's going on in the environment. Very, Very, Very important. Because when this part of the brain, The medial prefrontal cortex, Is more active, Our nervous systems calm. If you have a traumatized nervous system, And you are repeatedly triggered by normal daily life, Because that's where you are traumatized, As is true for victims of domestic violence and abused children, Right? What happened, Happened in the context of home, Family, Community, Neighborhood. And so that's where the triggers are. Even our own emotions and reactions can be triggering. So, Very, Very important. The medial prefrontal cortex, Which again, Is the part of the brain that allows us to hover above and to be aware of our thoughts, Feelings, And physical responses. That part of the brain is also thought to be an integrative center, A center that is connected to the thinking brain, To the feeling brain, To the impulsive brain, Which is way back here. And so when we notice, When we just observe, This part of the brain gets more active, And we become calmer. Very, Very, Very important. And all of the most popular and effective ways of treating trauma, All have a mindfulness component, All activate this medial prefrontal cortex. So, That's one of the essences of the TIST approach and of the work found in the workbook, Is helping trauma survivors to notice rather than react to whatever gets triggered, Good, Bad, Or ugly, And to name what they notice as a part.