I recently interviewed UK author and psychotherapist Gill Frost about her book "The Girls Witihin", which tells the story of her first DI-client's recovery journey. Here's a short extract from the first and second part of this interview - you can listen to the complete thing on my YouTube channel DI Without The Disorder.
Me: It sounds really amazing to me that - you know, when you just told me that you didn't even know about childhood trauma when you had this client who had DI, and that you then went on to just learn everything that you could, while still working alongside her. I think that's really amazing, I mean I would wish that every counsellor would be willing and able to do that for their client.
Because I think it's really this kind of devotion or loyalty that I think, people who had traumatised childhood really need - to experience that someone cares so much for them. They're going to all of this work, and all just in order to help them. I would imagine that this also really helped your client, helped her on her healing journey. And also I'm really interested in what you said about how important her child parts were in her overall healing journey and how they basically saved your client.
Gill: Absolutely, yes. I think what I would like to start with, is that I have always believed that every human being on earth is being made up of many parts. I also have younger parts, that I have a very healthy relationship with. I have a 6-year old part and a teenage part, and other parts as well, who help me to understand who I am as a grown-up woman.
But what I hadn't realised until working with this very first client of mine, who suddenly, one day, in the middle of a therapy session, switched - and there I was presented with a 6-year old looking at me and saying in a lovely young voice: "Hello Gill!" And what this client has taught me is that all of us have these parts within us - but if we have traumatised parts, who will have been dissociated because of the trauma - then they have this capacity, sometimes, to actually come out, and be seen, be heard, and allow the therapist to have a relationship with them.
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From the second part:
Gill: "They (her child parts) love to listen to her. And she reads out loud to them. And they can hear on the inside. And she also puts on Walt Disney cartoons or a kids' film of some sort. And both the 8 and 6-year old sit side by side on the sofa and watch it.
Me: That's so lovely.
Gill: It's absolutely extraordinary. So, as a result of all of this, when it came to the end of therapy, and she was at last loving her internal parts, and taking care of them, and entertaining them - showing them that they were worthy and loved enough to be read to and all the rest of it - I bought her an athlete's relay baton.