For a treatment to be successful how much of a patient's inner experience do we need to know/feel on a visceral level, in our gut, along with the crucial intellectual understanding and empathy? Is it even possible to understand another in this way? I don't know the answer, but my experience in this case has given me food for thought--or rather, food for my gut--for it was primarily in my gut and body that I experienced these moments that then had to be digested and contemplated with the thinking minds of trusted colleagues. Those terrifying moments in question were related to the split-off experiences of a young adult DID patient, a victim of severe, organized abuse and mind-control. Though this case and experience lend themselves to a discussion about reality and fantasy ( how much of what this patient reports actually happened?), the question I am asking speaks to this patient's undeniable inner experience of terror, horror and fear, and if my meager shadow experience of these self-states was vital or of the essence to the work.
Ingrid Tucci, LPCC is a graduate of MPSI's PPTP program. She has a special interest in working with patients who present with a history of severe and chronic childhood trauma, including dissociative symptoms and disorders and/or personality disorders. She is currently receiving monthly training from the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation and receives individual supervision specific to Dissociative Identity Disorder. She also has significant experience working with substance use disorders and with sexual disorders. She works from a relational psychodynamic perspective.
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