Sandra Wieland, PhD.
Registered Psychologist

Individual therapy for children, adolescents, &adults
Consultation for therapists

Clinical Practice

• What is EMDR?
• What is play therapy?
• Parents's role in their child's therapy
• Stopping the Cycle

Types of training and consultation provided:

• Therapy - The Brain's Second Chance (.pdf file)
• The Internalization Model
• Dissociation: Creative Coping
• An Important Form of Therapy for Children - EMDR (.pdf file)

The Centre for Counselling and Therapy

Professional Credentials

Publications

Home

Dissociation: Creative Coping

A child threatened by extreme abuse or violence seeks a way to keep safe, to keep the self away from what is happening. Physically the child cannot get away. Psychologically the child can go away.

The child may move herself mentally into the teddy bear on the shelf or up to the corner of the room, from which point she observes things happening to the body that was left behind. Another child may stay present in her body but cut off all emotional or physical feelings. As this space or barrier is placed between her and the abuse, the child's distress and anxiety decrease. She moves behind that space more and more frequently until the movement away, a distortion of reality, becomes a regular pattern of reacting to frightening situations.

Dissociation, which occurs from time to time as a normal phenomenon for both children and adults, is often used as a protective mechanism by individuals who are abused or threatened in some way. But even as the child protects herself, the distortion of perception and cognition causes her to lose a part of her feelings, of her experience, of herself. Although lost to the child's integrated awareness, the feelings, memories, and parts of self continue to exist, separated off, within the child's internal world. The child becomes fragmented. Although protective, dissociation leads to distorted functioning for the child, then adolescent, then adult.

Therapy requires first and foremost the establishment of safety. The therapist explains to the child or adult the dynamics of dissociation. The individual is encouraged to look at and understand her internal parts-whether feelings or function ego states or alters-and to increase communication between these parts. The individual is encouraged to become more aware and observant of herself and her behaviour and to learn new and positive ways of coping and of moderating her behaviour. For a child, the role of the family as a support and as a source of observations and connections is extremely important. The trauma (a single major event or many frequent smaller events), which necessitated the dissociation, needs to be processed in therapy.