Three Distinct Approaches for Helping a Patient Integrate Their Dissociative Parts

So now let’s look at some strategies for integrating your patient’s structurally dissociated parts.

I want to give you three approaches: the first is a somatic approach, the second is an experiential approach, and the third is a cognitive approach.

So first, let’s get into the somatic approach. Take a look at how you might work with your patient’s dissociated parts by using their posture and movement.

Dr. Ogden: I really track for how parts are represented through different movements and postures in the body, and then use the body to help integrate.

So for example with one client, she had a collapsed posture like this, right? There was another that was hopeless. It was a shut down, hopeless state, and another part of her was assertive and wanted to move through the world and accomplish things.

So, if we’re working with integration, we are at risk of overriding certain parts through our physical resources that we develop. I asked her to go back and forth between that part that was assertive and the part of her that felt collapsed and shut down, and I said, “Let’s see if we can bring them together through your posture.”

So she would explore back and forth until she could find the posture that included both these parts, and then that became her homework — “Okay, for this week, why don’t you just pay attention to a posture that doesn’t override that collapsed part but that includes that part?”

Dr. Buczynski: Because posture and movement often hold important clues about your patient’s different parts, it can be so helpful to know how to use the body as a way to bring those parts together and integrate them.

Next, I want to show you how you might address your patient’s dissociated parts from a more experiential angle. . .

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