bearika

I came here, also, to comment on complex trauma. However, I have a different take. Formerly traumatized children, even those with treatment-resistant personality disorders, can improve how they work with their system through therapy. Experiential therapies like IFS are proving to be groundbreaking modalities with great outcomes. They also reframe the goal: the goal is not to heal, but to understand, work with, and create space between the self and the system that creates automatic responses to the world at large. In doing so, one expands their window of tolerance over time. I actually found this article to be very inline with trauma healing and my own personal experience of healing complex-PTSD.

I came here to look for a post just like this. Ruminating is a defense, a response from one's nervous system to a perceived lack of safety. And mindfulness and therapies are very effective in treating the root cause of that nervous system response. Just a shout to say that there are some situations where cognitive-based therapy isn't the optimal answer, where more experiential forms of therapy like IFS or AEDP are far more effective. For example, people who grew up with caretakers who were not able to teach and model proper emotional regulation would likely respond better to experiential therapies vs. cognitive.