1st Edition

Dissociation, Mindfulness, and Creative Meditations Trauma-Informed Practices to Facilitate Growth

By Christine C. Forner Copyright 2017
    202 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    202 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Dissociation, Mindfulness, and Creative Meditations explores the potential of mindfulness and explains why this level of developmental human achievement is so precarious within traumatic stress, especially traumatic dissociation. Chapters discuss the connection and disconnection between mindfulness and dissociative disorders and highlight the importance of gently creating a mindfulness practice for traumatized individuals. Readers will learn how to exercise the part of the brain that is responsible for mindfulness and how to regulate the part that is responsible for dissociation, and they’ll come away from the book with tips that will help even the most dissociative client to reap the benefits of mindfulness practices.

    List of Figures  Preface  Acknowledgments  About the Author  1. Mindfulness  2. The Medial Prefrontal Cortex and Mindfulness  3. Conceptual Understanding of Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders  4.Foundational Understanding of Dissociative Disorders  5. Childhood Trauma Constructed and Deconstructed: How Mindfulness is Prevented from Developing  6. An Academic Perspective of Dissociation  7. Trauma, Dissociation, and Mindfulness: Trauma-Informed Practices  8. Meditation and Psychotherapeutic Meditation  9. Dissociation, Mindfulness, and Creative Meditations: Trauma-Informed Practices That Facilitate Growth  10. Medial Prefrontal Cortex Processing and Creative Meditations  Index

    Biography

    Christine C. Forner, MSW, RSW, has more than 17 years of clinical experience working with individuals with trauma, PTSD, traumatic dissociation, and developmental trauma. Christine works in private practice at Associated Counselling in Calgary Alberta, Canada. She has presented locally and internationally on issues of traumatic dissociation and mindfulness and dissociation and is the current treasurer for the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation.

    "Written by an experienced and gifted clinician who has dedicated her professional life to treating those with dissociative disorders, this ambitious volume skillfully clarifies the complex relationship between mindfulness and dissociation. Full of fascinating anecdotes, illustrations, allegories and therapeutic exercises, Dissociation, Mindfulness, and Creative Meditations brings together brain, body, and treatment in a way that is accessible and rewarding to the reader—a brilliant contribution to the field of traumatology and a must read for trauma therapists and their clients."

    Pat Ogden, PhD, founder, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute

    "Christine Forner has crafted a book that is highly practical, theoretically grounded and innovative despite its theoretical and technical sophistication. Dissociation, Mindfulness, and Creative Meditations integrates many aspects of mindfulness, neurobiology, dissociation theory, and meditation practices in simple language, using apt metaphors and illustrative examples. Clinicians, researchers and educators will all find treasures in this book."

    Martin J. Dorahy, PhD, professor of clinical psychology, University of Canterbury, New Zealand