Trauma & Attachment Therapy

Therapeutic Metaphors from Star Trek and other Popular Culture

Utilization is the idea that therapists should use the culture and the language that their clients already use. If your client has watched Star Trek, they already know how to utilize these great tools. 

• Safe place: "Do you know what a containment field is on Star Trek? Great! So imagine your safe place has a containment field around it. No one can see it, no one can get through it, and it will keep you completely safe from harm."
• 
  
• Sharing between Parts with highly dissociated clients: "We've cleared a lot of the trauma that that part holds. Does the Adult part feel ready to know what happened back then? Good. Then let the child do a Vulcan mind-meld with the adult and share the information about what happened and what it was like for her. Let me know when the transfer of information is complete."
• "So lets bring this to the Holodeck and run through the event so you can control how it turns out this time."
• Practicing: "So lets create this situation on the Holodeck, you can direct the Holodeck to create facsimiles of all the players and you can practice how you want to talk to that person/ those people until you feel that you know exactly how to do it in real life."
• "Now imagine transporting that 5-year-old self out of that bed and out of that time, letting her rematerialize right here and right now. Is she here? Then let her know who you are and where she is and that she's finally safe from that guy."
• Other magic:
• "What would Harry Potter do? What spell would you cast?"
• "Imagine you had Superman's/Wonder Woman's strength? What would you do then?"
• "So could you go back in time with Doctor Who and rescue that child?" (For Brits)

My clients are delighted when I speak their language and use what's already in their brains. If they've spent years with Star Trek or Doctor Who or the mutants in Heroes, their mirror neurons have already had them doing the magical activities, and are ready to take them into a different reality. 

Years ago, a cult-abused DID client cured her insomnia by imagining a Star Trek containment field around her bed, which she turned on before sleep. Later, after years of trauma-clearing and Vulcan mind-melds between related parts, she did a mind-meld between all remaining parts and integrated (mostly) in my office. 

  

"Mental" Is Terrible

There's a new fantasy show on Fox: Mental. It's supposed to take place in an inpatient psych unit.

So, first, the new head of psychiatry strips down in a room full of clients to connect with a psychotic guy who has pulled his clothes off. Later, he breaks into a woman's house in order to check out his hunch that her schizophrenic brother is an artist. And he thinks it's a good idea for his patients to go cold turkey off their antipsychotic medications. And he doesn't lose his contract, immediately.

All the psychiatrists are cute. All the patients are reasonable. The families just don't understand. And the residents and other psychiatrists have endless time to spend with their clients. Oh, and they invented a radical new idea: intensive outpatient day treatment.

I saw bad treatment, silly ideas, and a romanticization of extreme mental illness. I saw nearly every 1960's cliche possible. It's really bad. Except that all the psychiatrists are cute. And the new head of psychiatry looks to be about 32. That would happen, too.