I fell into this by accident, when attachment disorder hit me upside the head. Just as the latest brain science on how it works and how to heal was flooding in. So I’ve been going a bit ape (left), multiplying content here like rabbits. (Click pic for best view.)
*New! How to Hire a Therapist http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/resources/z-under-construction/
My webmaster finally spanked me (metaphorically speaking, of course) and said “There’s too much good info on here, with no way to find it! Re-index the place so people can find your book, Featured Topics, and News Blogs.” So here’s a page to help you find stuff:
Book: The first park of my story “Don’t Try This Alone” is posted on the New Book page here. But now you can buy the whole book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1976120128
Website Resources: New: Healing Tools for Trauma
… and also – Healing with Body Work
… Audios & Videos
… Books & Reviews
… Find a Support Group
… Find an Attachment-based Psychotherapist
… Grief Recovery Handbook
… Key Articles
… Seminars
… Special Reports
Featured Topics (find info by topic):
Adult Attachment Disorder, Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)
Attachment-based Psychotherapists Directory and Referrals
Brain Science
Developmental Trauma, Infant Development
Grief Recovery Handbook (GRH) and Method
Healing with Body Work, Rhythmic Regulation
Mammalian Attachment, Limbic Brain, “Fur”
Meditation, Being Present, Radical Acceptance
Music and Attachment, MP3 audios, Sheet Music
Romance, Dating, and Trauma
Support Groups, How to Find
News Blogs: Click here for News Blogs; here are the main themes:
Latest on the Brain
How We Develop
Did I Attach?
50% Suffer Trauma
On Healing: Body Work
Being Present, Now
Watch Out for More Trauma
What is Addiction?
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If you find the site useful, do remember: I’m not a PhD studying “those people” with attachment disorder. I’m just a paramecium writing about how it feels to be a paramecium.
Tags: Adult Attachment Disorder, Adult Attachment Interview, Adult Attachment Theory, Bessel van der Kolk, Body Work, brain science, Brain stem, Bruce Perry, Daniel Siegel, Dissociation, Grief Recovery Handbook, Peter Levine, Stephen Porges
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Comments are encouraged with the usual exceptions; rants, political speeches, off-color language, etc. are unlikely to post. Starting 8-22-16, software will limit comments to 1030 characters (2 long paragraphs) a while, until we get new software to take longer comments again.
On my last post I stated that I was about to try DNMS, I had just found a competent therapist and was hoping for a good result. Unfortunately it “just didn’t work out” and I don’t think it had anything to do with the individual therapist, I mean I have understood for awhile that I’m in pretty bad shape but it just didn’t seem to be much more effective than CBT for me, and I’ve also stated that due to some degree of physical dissociation EMDR doesn’t work either. Well I’ve been searching further and there’s a new (to me anyway) approach out of JRI called “component-based therapy” or CBP, you can “get a flavor” of it by reading the following article:
http://www.traumacenter.org/products/pdf_files/Treating_Adult_Survivors_Childhood_Emotional_Abuse_Neglect_G0003.pdf
There are seminars available, there is also a book coming out called “Reaching Across the Abyss” (that’s the short title) and Dr. Spinazzola is the co-author, I believe it’ll be on Guilford Press but there’s no release date yet. Hope…
I’m a big fan of this site but my experience is even more extreme than most of you will have to deal with. I’ve had wonderful luck with infra-low neurofeedback but otherwise my successes have been quite rare (and that was after almost ten years of basically no therapeutic luck at all). For example I have severe hypervigilance insomnia so I still have so take seroquel every night in order to get to sleep at all. Also I’m extremely alexithymic so a lot of the therapy modalities being discussed here (somatic experiencing, attachment therapy, even EMDR) absolutely don’t seem to work on me, I guess it’s because my developmental trauma had onset so early and the abuse was so severe. It looks as if my primary option in addition to the NFB is to find a DNMS therapist at the P2 level. I’d definitely like to find someone with a comparable experience to “compare notes” with or if there are any therapists watching who have any experience with this option with someone like myself, thanks for reading this.
I’m loving infra-low neurofeedback! Equipment maker released a new super-low frequency range this year; helps me a lot.
I’m very interested in this … I am looking for ways to help young adults who are aging out of foster care. Most have attachment issues and I’m trying to find training. Any suggestions you may know of…anyone out there doing cutting edge research? This is my passion. Eventually I want to develop a program young adults can go through to really set them on a path for a functional adulthood but education alone (how to handle finances, cook, get a job) is all useless if you arent emotionally and spiritually healthy. Thank you for any input.
The cutting-edge research is on how to combine attachment-based therapy with neurofeedback (NFB). NFB champion Sebern Fisher, an attachment expert who’s healed her own attachment trauma, had your job for 25 years. It broke her heart how hard it was to help these kids, until she found NFB. Please, please listen to her 2 radio interviews in detail on this, links are here: http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/neurofeedback/
See also Bessel van der Kolk’s video, top of this next blog. Don’t miss the moving talk by Sebern and her foster patient Karen just after minute 42: http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/neurofeedback-van-der-kolk/
I am so greatful for you taking the time and the effort to respond. Getting a reply from you felt like God answering a prayer. It is so hard to understand and validate the emotional thunderstorm from the deeper feeling/body layers of my brain myself, and I so much fear not being understood by a therapist. I don’t have much respect either for psychology or psychologists. Is this my attachment defect? I feel that if I have to give up my frontal lobe too there is nothing left of me.
I wish you could take me by the hand and lead me to a safe and all-understanding therapist. I am afraid that I might become violent if I’m exposed to an “it is all your fault” therapist.
I left a message on a therapists answering machine. She was in a hurry when she called back and wanted me to commit to an appointment right away. That made me feel scared and made it difficult for me to formulate a verbal reply. How can I find out if she is to be trusted?
So I tap away – I flick my eyes EMDR – I shake like a polar bear – and I don’t understand Peter Levine’s method yet. I read van der Kolk’s “The body keeps the score.” Reading the notes for your book is what has given me the best comfort.
We must, must have a good, experienced attachment-based therapist, foremost. The rest of my list of what I did to heal is in comments below. As to a good, experienced attachment-based therapist — Yes, they are hard to find; we must interview many! If they are distant? Or even nice but merely rational, all head talk, not compassion? Don’t hire them. Worst: if they make you feel it’s your fault, walk out! Make more calls, interview another therapist. “It’s Not Your Fault” as Robin Williams told Will Hunting. See How to Hire a Therapist: http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/resources/z-under-construction/
I’m in a hell like you describe. It was helpful to me to read about the failure of mainstream therapy to help you. I am myself a psychologist and trained in both EMDR and EFT/TFT. My returning trauma stems from my mother going psychotic when I was 13 months old, and her regular hospitalizations. I was so looking forward to reading about the solution to your agony. Please don’t tell me you found the right man!? I feel more desperate now when you give no understandable clue to how I can escape my unbearable pain. Please help me…
I didn’t “find a man.” Here’s what I did:
1. I got educated about attachment: http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/adult-attachment-interview-aai-mary-main/ Also Dr. Allan Schore’s 9-28-14 Oslo speech “The Most Important Years…the right brain and its importance,” on infant attachment (meat starts minute 8): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW-S4cyEFCc
2. I found a good attachment-based therapist to meet eye to eye weekly. What was damaged by a human attachment can only be healed by a new human attachment. Therapist locator: http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/resources/attachment-therapists-directory/
3. With my therapist, I did a ton of body work “Somatic Experiencing” by Dr. Peter A. Levine: http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/featured-topics/healing-body-work/
4. Now I’ve added Neurofeedback: http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/neurofeedback/ As Dr. Bessel van der Kolk recently announced, “Neurofeedback Works!”
Audio interview podcast on how I healed: http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/first-podcast-1/
and Healing Tools for Trauma: http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/resources/tools/
I do SE work with my therapist and he lets me check in with him everyday via text and sometimes on phone outside of session. I have but sometimes I feel I want him to get away from me. Did you feel like this too? Checking in with your therapist and wanting to push them away?
I’d get enraged at my therapist for “being unclear,” same thing as pushing him away. He taught me to get as furious at him as I felt like, since we must have the experience of having a bad feeling with another human being, to stop having it! He was “safe” for my emotions; that heals them.
Kathy Brous is there any way I can order the book
Don’t try this alone: The silent epidemic of attachment disorder
Please let me know as soon as possible.
Thank you for your time.
bronco_bob1957@msn.com
303-915-2618.
Please if I don’t answer leave voice mail.
Again thank you for you time
Bob Cothran
Did your book ever come out on Amazon? I searched for it but couldn’t find it. Something about how you write, so human, but so passionately informed, makes me trust you. Also the fact that you have been through a healing journey, like mine (I’m 31) that has included so many modalities that span from therapy to bodywork to “energy” healing such as EFT or Neurofeedback.
My book will take til next year. I’m delighted by the huge response to my website but it takes so much of my time. Also I had several unexpected surgeries. Good news is, much of my “bottom line” is already here on my site. Please see my reply to “VS” on this page for where you should look.
I just found your website and need to join. I have an ex and ex in-laws on all social media don’t want them to harass me as before. I have been reading about attachment theory since 2012, searching for info on self centered parents, verbal abuse, emotional abuse. I found both my mother and father have Narcissistic Personality Disorder NPD. My ex was diagnosed with Passive Aggressive Personality Disorder. Scary. We marry what we are most familiar with; I married both my parents. I believe I am the Anxious Insecure Attachment type. I am 42 and I live alone and don’t want to overwhelm anyone. I recognize many names on your site: John Bowlby, Bessel van der Kolk MD, Henry Cloud, John Townshend, Mary Main. I am in the right place 🙂 I am excited that I found your website, looking forward to learning and the healing I so desperately NEED. I just bought “The Body Keeps The Score by van der Kolk. I am hurting and I want healing so I can lead a normal life and not feel worthless anymore and hope that I will have people who don’t reject me or neglect me and have empathy and compassion. Thank you for this website!
Now I’m grateful for your webmaster’s insight!
This gratitude may never end. And contentment is beginning to creep back in, too. Thanks!