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17: Rhonda: Healing Dialogue and Shame Defense

DOI:

10.1891/9780826172563.0017

Abstract

This chapter presents a case illustrating how an individual with complex posttraumatic stress disorder (complex PTSD) may have issues not only of unresolved traumatic experiences, but also very strong attachment to a perpetrating caretaker, as has been described by Colin Ross. This type of attachment is often lurking behind the client’s initial presentation, and can contribute in a major way to the development of dissociative personality structure. Rhonda had clear explicit memories of her confusion and fear when mother was sexually stimulating her while nursing, or while changing her diaper, during the first 2½ years of life. This chapter describes the next step in her therapy. The following session transcript illustrates the use of the Internal Healing Dialogue procedure to facilitate resolution of this client’s ambivalent and very damaging “attachment to the perpetrator”—attachment to mother—that continued in spite of her successful prior work.