debor016

I guess I could follow the theme of the weekend by listing some of the work-related things I am thankful for this Thanksgiving: 1.        My book- I’m so happy and proud of this accomplishment and thankful for all the people that helped me realize it. 2.        All the smart, interesting, thoughtful caring people I have met through my training and consulting. 3.        The people I have come to know who really think about this work, develop new ideas, and strive to change the world. These include Steve Brown, Laurie Pearlman, Sandy Bloom, Kay Saakvitne, Martha Holden, Sarah Yanosi, and many others. It’s great to bounce ideas off of each other and thus come up with even better thoughts. 4.        The concept of vicarious transformation. 5.        My new friend at the UConn School of Social Work Megan Berthold whose courageous work with tort...

I have been trying to figure out ways to convey to people the importance of a person’s basic templates about other people. These templates are formed early in life, before the baby has language. All of our expectations and actions are based on these templates. We see them as the way the world is, not as our ideas or opinions. The reason I feel it is so important to highlight these templates is that I have come to believe that our most important task as treaters is to change these templates from “people can’t be trusted and they hurt you” to “some people are trustworthy and can be a source of joy and help.” If we understand that, it changes how we approach treatment. I devised the following exercise to demonstrate the effect of templates. To use this for training, I would divide the group into smaller groups. Give each group a pair of scenarios. Instruct them to consider what each youth is feeling, and what they are likely to do next. What might be the difference between the ways tha...

When a baby is very small, before she has language, she is already investigating the world in which she lives and coming to conclusions about what kind of place it is. Most importantly, she is learning about the people around her. Who are these big people? How do they treat me? When one of them comes over to me, do I generally feel better or worse?  In good enough parenting, the presence of a person is usually associated with pleasure. I am hungry, someone comes and feeds me and I experience pleasure. I cry, someone rocks and soothes me.I am wet, someone changes me. The baby gradually discovers that she can do things to affect these people: she cries, they come; she smiles, they smile; and she enjoys many other positive interactions. Since the baby has no language at this point, she cannot create a narrative of these experiences. Instead the are stored deep in her body as a template, a pattern, a set of assumptions about how the world is. As the child grows older, she does not unde...