Overcoming Suicidality, Addictive and Unsafe Behavior (Fisher HS 052375)

Course overview

Witness and learn from master clinician and trauma expert Janina Fisher, PhD., in this series of compelling, real-life therapy sessions that demonstrate key moments in treating trauma and associated disorders with challenging clients. Each session includes an introductory teaching moment from Dr. Fisher, and is interspersed with commentary – giving you the best opportunity to truly learn proven therapeutic trauma techniques and improve treatment outcomes. “CP,” a client with Dissociative Identity Disorder, is working on changing her relationship to chronic suicidal ideation and impulsivity. In this session, she is helped to re-frame the wish to die as an expression of a suicidal part of her personality trying to control flashbacks and overwhelming emotions. This helps her more clearly differentiate the wish to live despite the self-destructive impulses. She speaks frankly about the shame evoked by traditional approaches to suicidality and how it fuels the suicidal part to desperate measures. By understanding the suicidal ideation as a communication from the suicidal part, she reports a growing ability to keep herself safe, no matter how intense the suicidal impulses.