What do you think?
Rate this book
Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation
Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors integrates a neurobiologically informed understanding of trauma, dissociation, and attachment with a practical approach to treatment, all communicated in straightforward language accessible to both client and therapist. Readers will be exposed to a model that emphasizes "resolution"―a transformation in the relationship to one’s self, replacing shame, self-loathing, and assumptions of guilt with compassionate acceptance. Its unique interventions have been adapted from a number of cutting-edge therapeutic approaches, including Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems, mindfulness-based therapies, and clinical hypnosis. Readers will close the pages of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors with a solid grasp of therapeutic approaches to traumatic attachment, working with undiagnosed dissociative symptoms and disorders, integrating "right brain-to-right brain" treatment methods, and much more. Most of all, they will come away with tools for helping clients create an internal sense of safety and compassionate connection to even their most dis-owned selves.
292 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2016
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 108 reviews
February 5, 2019
This book is transformative. It's not an easy read and may be a slog for those who don't have a background in trauma, but boy, is it ever worth the read. The idea at the centre of her book, that instead of leaning into integration, we need to lean into dissociation, is revolutionary. And it is by doing just that that we can help people heal. We need to welcome all the parts back to their home, and make sure there is a grown up there to embrace them, hold them, and see them through. With that, you can rebuild humans who have been ravaged by early maltreatment and abuse. Bravo Janina Fisher. This work is a masterpiece.
October 22, 2017
This is a fabulous text that provides practical skills for working with clients with trauma and dissociation (though I suspect non-dissociative clients may also benefit from parts of this intervention too). I very much appreciate the respect Fisher cultivates for the client's own resources, self-compassion and autonomy. Fisher deeply understand this population, and I am honoured to be able to incorporate her wisdom and expertise into my own clinical practice.
February 2, 2018
This book resonated with me and provided many insights on what is going on inside a person struggling with fragmented parts of himself. It's like a barrier between you and the world, then a barrier within yourself that you try to overcome so you could function well, and so much more. I first tried a sample of its eBook and I found out that it had depth in a way that it spoke from what the person feels from the inside out which, unfortunately, is often being minimized or misunderstood. I bought the book eventually, and I must say, whether you are managing on your own or being assisted, it's a treasure to have.
August 2, 2022
I have just reread this book in July 2022, two and a bit years since my first reading. Last time, I was a bit disappointed and found it pathologizing at times. However, having read many books on therapy over the last several years, I’ve come to the conclusion that I find most therapy books patholgizing to some degree (including ones I absolutely love, as I have come to with Healing The Fragmented Selves), which I ascribe to the binary labelling of ‘mentally ill’ vs ‘mentally healthy’ and the lack of systemic awareness as it relates to wellbeing and how we conceptualise of mental/emotional distress and trauma.
I appreciate the contribution Janina Fisher has made to the field of parts work in looking our younger selves in relation to the sympathetic nervous system responses (fight/flight/freeze/fawn - although I’m not sure if fawn is technically an SNS response). I had earlier come across this approach in the Pete Walker’s well-known book, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. However, Janina offers a much deeper dive into this approach.
I appreciate the contribution Janina Fisher has made to the field of parts work in looking our younger selves in relation to the sympathetic nervous system responses (fight/flight/freeze/fawn - although I’m not sure if fawn is technically an SNS response). I had earlier come across this approach in the Pete Walker’s well-known book, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. However, Janina offers a much deeper dive into this approach.
January 22, 2021
Good, comprehensive introduction to the topic. It raised a lot of questions for me, too. I've read other books on trauma, but this was the most triggering read for me as someone who deals with these issues. If that applies to you, go slow and be gentle with yourself.
August 4, 2022
Not a self-help book but rather aimed at mental health providers. This was recommended to me by my therapist so I could understand the concept of internal self-alienation and strategies to mitigate. The title is very gnarly, but the concepts in the book are relevant both to folks who have experienced intense / disturbing trauma as well as to folks who might be dealing with a more garden variety kind of trauma caused by an emotionally fraught childhood home life.
The book has been helpful for me personally so far. But also - wish this had been available to me when I was an educator, especially when I was working in a high-trauma community. I wish these concepts were available to all caretakers and people in social work fields such as education.
The concepts in this book overlap/integrate with more well-known concepts such as attachment theory and mindfulness, so it is not as intimidating as the title suggests. The writing is also very friendly.
This is an academic book that costs big bucks. I was able to get it through interlibrary loan!
The book has been helpful for me personally so far. But also - wish this had been available to me when I was an educator, especially when I was working in a high-trauma community. I wish these concepts were available to all caretakers and people in social work fields such as education.
The concepts in this book overlap/integrate with more well-known concepts such as attachment theory and mindfulness, so it is not as intimidating as the title suggests. The writing is also very friendly.
This is an academic book that costs big bucks. I was able to get it through interlibrary loan!
May 14, 2017
This book is truly enlightening. It brings an original view on trauma and what happens inside. The more I read and the more I identified with the author's ideas. I've been struggling with my demons for a long time and this book gave me hope that there is something I can do to improve the situation.
It would be best to work on it with a therapeut who is familiarized with this concept but unfortunately they aren't easy to find depending on where you live.
Regardless, I'll try by myself.
I really recommend this book. It's very helpful.
It would be best to work on it with a therapeut who is familiarized with this concept but unfortunately they aren't easy to find depending on where you live.
Regardless, I'll try by myself.
I really recommend this book. It's very helpful.
January 17, 2022
Una guida fondamentale per lavorare con i disturbi dissociativi e le parti del sé dissociate. Personalmente, mi è stato molto d'aiuto nella mia pratica clinica.
July 2, 2019
Should be required reading for not only health professionals but also the bureaucrats in charge of allocating funding and resources. The mainstream mental health system needs to open itself up to the groundbreaking and evidence based tsunami of information coming out showing that interpersonal trauma is a major contributor to physical illnesses and mental distress of all types.
December 30, 2018
Fantastic text. I wouldn't say this lightly, but I think this book will change my life.
June 26, 2021
Wow it took me a long time to finish this as an audiobook! It took a while to get used to the writing style, it definitely required my extensive background in trauma work and studies to understand, and was very flowy. It was written in a very run-on sentence, flowy, dense way. I got very triggered at times because there was not enough concrete information on ways parts work can be done wrong, and when to differentiate between when a part is upset and when an adult self is upset by something valid and present. Parts work can easily be used to force someone to dissociate, and to easily manipulate them in extreme ways, force them to hallucinate and disconnect them from themselves. Like so many psych frameworks, cis white women with privilege focus on people who had traumatic childhoods but nothing to fear in adulthood. Additionally, this long yet highly introductory text didn’t connect this framework enough with other popular alternative trauma frameworks- namely codependency. What could be argued as codependent re-enactments of trauma got framed as “strengths” in this book- being a savior for many and not knowing why. I did appreciate the focus on consent, staying out of the hospital, not pathologizing suicidality, and the strong emphasis on compassion. This was my first introduction to parts work and it all feels new but HIGHLY transformative and life changing, useful and a great way to conceptualize mindfulness, deep listening to oneself, a great way to navigate triggers, AND to implement utmost compassion. I felt like I was able to gain vocabulary and language that describes what has ALWAYS been intuitive and sensical to me my whole life- which I have only described as “triggers” and “emotional flashbacks.” This adds so much for dynamism, depth, dimension, and potentially for internal love, discovery, and dialogue. Perhaps because I listened to the audiobook and didn’t read the book, I feel like I didn’t gain enough insight and guidance to really know how to fully do this with myself yet. But I now identify as having DID because of this text and that has helped to explain a lot to me and my friends. So much more to learn.
July 7, 2018
This is an excellent book on the reality of working with trauma survivors. Highly recommend it. My professional experience working with many people who struggle with these issues is consistent with her approach on what is helpful and what is not helpful....
July 8, 2023
Life-changing and, for me, way better than a self-help book because it is so rooted in science and research. So much makes more sense to me now!
November 19, 2023
مهمترین و بهترین آموزش این کتاب برای من، در خصوص عدم نیاز به دوباره زیستن تراما چه در اتاق درمان و چه به صورت شخصیبود. نویسنده اصرار منطقی و قشنگی داره که تراما اونقدر ناخوشایند و بد بوده که باعث اثرات مخرب فعلی شده و حتی در پروسهی درمان، دونستن تصویر کلی میتونه برا درمانگر کافی باشه و لزومی نداره مراجعهکننده چندین باره اون اتفاقات تجربه کنه تا درمان بشه!
May 26, 2021
It would take me days to sing the praises of this book. I was looking for something to help me integrate EMDR therapy, Parts Work, and general trauma-informed psychotherapy. This book does all that and more, providing a surprisingly comprehensive framework for working with dissociation. For several months it was my go-to whenever I was doing a case conceptualization - so much that I'd reference or quote it during supervision sessions! I now feel much more comfortable identifying dissociative states, "alters", and blended trauma responses; I have a language to help my client develop self-understanding of some of the most potentially confounding symptoms of trauma, like reenactment, fractured identity, feeling flashbacks, addictive patterns, and more. Highly recommend to therapists looking for a deeper understanding of PTSD, cPTSD, and dissociative disorders.
May 6, 2020
The author discusses in detail about how to integrate different parts of fragmented selves that a trauma survivor carries within their minds in order to survive complex childhood trauma. Throughout the book, Dr. Fisher also provides detailed examples of how to navigate the different parts of a client and how to interact with these parts to form a cohesive narrative for a survivor. A must read for survivors and practitioners alike.
June 2, 2020
This book has been immeasurably helpful in helping me integrate different approaches into my work with clients. Most notably somatic work, parts work, mindfulness and compassion focused therapy. My understanding of working with complex trauma and structural dissociation has taken a giant step thanks to this book!
September 16, 2017
This book has really informed my practice when listening to clients who have survived child abuse. There is a practicality about it combined with compassion and understanding as well as a scholarly approach.
June 19, 2019
An excellent book about trauma and using and identifying parts of self. I love the exercises at the back of the book and have used them with many of my clients.
September 1, 2020
This book introduced me to a new world of counseling and I'm already seeing improvements in how I work with my clients.
January 28, 2021
For anyone living with DID or alongside someone who is, this book is amazing.
March 31, 2024
The body of research presented in this book provides valuable insight for anyone who suffered childhood trauma. If I were to suggest this book to another person, I would highlight two noteworthy impressions.
1. The ideas in this book can be helpful for victims of childhood trauma, but it does feel more geared to those suffering from extreme issues of DID and fragmentation, even up to individuals who are in institutional care.
2. This is not a traditional self help book. It is written from both a client and a therapist perspective. The ideas contained within are good starting points for clients, but should not be fully implemented without professional guidance. (As a footnote to statement number 2; I do not feel the healing techniques are in any way dangerous to self implement. I found the trauma responses discussed within to be highly nuanced, and using this book in conjunction with therapy will allow the reader to properly utilize its mental health benefits.)
1. The ideas in this book can be helpful for victims of childhood trauma, but it does feel more geared to those suffering from extreme issues of DID and fragmentation, even up to individuals who are in institutional care.
2. This is not a traditional self help book. It is written from both a client and a therapist perspective. The ideas contained within are good starting points for clients, but should not be fully implemented without professional guidance. (As a footnote to statement number 2; I do not feel the healing techniques are in any way dangerous to self implement. I found the trauma responses discussed within to be highly nuanced, and using this book in conjunction with therapy will allow the reader to properly utilize its mental health benefits.)
September 2, 2019
Introducing "language of parts". Probably very "threatening" to the classical psychological and old way to see the human mind with trauma related parts.
I'll use this many times.
Some might think this inclines clinical practice to iatrogenic practice but NO, STOP. This is only meant to be used (as it says) with people with trauma related parts, not the general population (duh!)
I enjoyed this. Though I think it felt short at times.
I'll use this many times.
Some might think this inclines clinical practice to iatrogenic practice but NO, STOP. This is only meant to be used (as it says) with people with trauma related parts, not the general population (duh!)
I enjoyed this. Though I think it felt short at times.
Read
December 22, 2020No rating – this is a book written for practicing therapists, and as a curious non-professional, it didn’t seem appropriate to attach a rating.
I did find this fascinating, though. Janina Fisher’s approach to trauma recovery builds on both the “body keeps the score” understanding of trauma pioneered by Bessel van der Kolk and internal family systems (IFS) therapy. I was unfamiliar with IFS before this, but I thought Fisher included sufficient information about it that I was able to understand without pausing to check Wikipedia.
I did find this fascinating, though. Janina Fisher’s approach to trauma recovery builds on both the “body keeps the score” understanding of trauma pioneered by Bessel van der Kolk and internal family systems (IFS) therapy. I was unfamiliar with IFS before this, but I thought Fisher included sufficient information about it that I was able to understand without pausing to check Wikipedia.
April 15, 2023
Great book.
Too busy to write a review.
Will try to get to it ASAP.
Too busy to write a review.
Will try to get to it ASAP.
January 14, 2019
I highly recommend this book for psychotherapists working in the field of trauma. Janina Fisher has expertly taken the next step in treating trauma survivors using Internal Family Systems and demonstrating through clinical case studies how to help clients recover from dissociative disorder and trauma. This book is technical and written from a neurobiological perspective and must be absorbed sentence by sentence. In other words, it is not a fast read, but a challenging endeavor. It has changed the way I conceptualize and treat my clients.
June 3, 2022
Let me start off this review by stating that this book is not for everyone. This book is written more for mental health professionals rather than the general public. However, I still highly recommend this book if you or someone you care about deals with any sort of mental “fragmentation”. The most extreme version of this would be DID (previously known as multiple personality disorder) but many of us actually have some sort of fragmentation due to different traumas. While I didn’t “enjoy” reading this book as it’s pretty dry, I still found it very informative. I recommend!
July 19, 2021
I got a lot out of this primer on how Internal Family Systems therapy works (as well as learning something about Sensorimotor therapy). I finally understand what the phrase "inner child work" is supposed to mean, and why that isn't a silly new age-y idea. Basically, when we are triggered and experience challenging emotional responses based on earlier life traumas, it can help to first externalize the response as belonging to the person we were at the time of the trauma, and then working to emotionally provide what that person would have needed. In the case of complex trauma, this may involve multiple "parts" of who we are, formed at different times throughout our lives. My biggest regret with this book is having not read it sooner, when I was working with a number of traumatized, reactive, and dissociative clients sharing space with each other. It really explains challenging behaviors in normalizing, de-pathologizing terms, so that clients and those who provide services can address them in ways that appreciate the whole person, and not just those parts that are easiest to get along with. I only have a couple of hesitations with this treatment, or how it was presented. First, it's not easy to imagine clients (at least those who don't actually have dissociative identities) being comfortable with language that fully splits off parts of themselves (i.e. calling the part that's scared "the little girl" instead of "the part of me that was scared as a girl"), even if it makes a useful shorthand. And second, I'm not sure I buy in to the idea that every negative emotion experienced by a person who's been traumatized must necessarily be a communication from a traumatized part — sometimes a bad day is just a bad day. Regardless, this is a paradigm-shifting book for me, and I'm sure I will be referencing the helpful appendixes again in the future.
November 25, 2019
It dives deep into an easy concept. Trauma survivors may experience dissociation similar to patients of dissociative identity disorder, but instead of it being multiple consciousnesses, it’s multiple “parts”. It is important to bring these little parts home. The book was amazing. Every therapist needs to read this. However, it had unnecessary repetition. This repetition didn’t make me like the book less though. It just made me take so much time to finish the book. Highly recommended. I will apply what I learned to my life and witness the improvement.
August 18, 2020
By far the best book I have read thus far on approach to combining IFS and a systems approach to working with clients. Fisher really knows her stuff. Not easy work for an individual or a therapist, but very rewarding for all involved. I highly recommend this book to any therapist out there because you are going to find more clients having "parts" than not. You might as well learn the best way to help yourself and others heal and move ahead.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 108 reviews