And now a few words about the book itself and its authors:

Winner of the 2011 International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) Pierre Janet Writing Award.

A patient-oriented manual for complex trauma survivors.

This training manual for patients who have a trauma-related dissociative disorder includes short educational pieces, homework sheets, and exercises that address ways in which dissociation interferes with essential emotional and life skills, and support inner communication and collaboration with dissociative parts of the personality. Topics include understanding dissociation and PTSD, using inner reflection, emotion regulation, coping with dissociative problems related to triggers and traumatic memories, resolving sleep problems related to dissociation, coping with relational difficulties, and help with many other difficulties with daily life. The manual can be used in individual therapy or structured groups.

Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: a presentation of the book

This book a offers specific skills that help stabilize individuals with complex dissociative disorders. These clients have often been sent to other types of treatment, such as those offered by Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. While helpful to non-dissociative individuals, these skills are not typically sufficiently modified for those who have dissociative disorders, and do not offer any techniques to work directly with dissociative parts; thus they tend not to be sufficiently effective with this population who are often most in need of stabilization. In addition, virtually all regulatory skills are focused on hyperarousal, even though many individuals who are dissociative also struggle with chronic hypoarousal.  This book contains skills which are designed or modified to address dissociation at the same time as skills deficits. These include emotional, impulse, and cognitive regulation strategies, mentalizing and other reflective skills, integration of both self and dyadic regulation in relationships, managing inner conflict and ambivalence, executive function skills, and adaptive decisionmaking skills. And as important as selfskills are, many the DD clients also need specific strategies to deal with daily life, such as managing self harm, sleeping, eating, free time, relaxation, work, planning, decision making, and relational skills, etc.

This book was originally written as a manual for structured groups but has been succesfully used in individual therapy with patients all over the world.

References

Boon, S., Steele, K., & Van der Hart, O. (2011). Coping with trauma-related dissociation: Skills training for patients and therapists.  New York: W. W. Norton.

 Suzette Boon is a pioneer in the field of the diagnosis of trauma-related disorders. She lives in Maarssen, the Netherlands.

Kathy Steele, MN, CS, is in private practice with Metropolitan Psychotherapy Associates in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a former President of the International Society for the Study of Dissociation.

Onno van der Hart, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Psychopathology of Chronic Traumatization, Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands, and a psychologist. Until 2017 he was also a psychotherapist in Amstelveen, the Netherlands. He is a Past President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS).