Understanding different types of voices: child voices, angry voices, perpetrator-imitating voices
"Thorough exposition of a trauma-informed understanding of voice hearing."
- Anne - psychotherapist
course description
Trauma events, by definition, evoke experiences that are overwhelming: they exceed the victim's existing capacity to cope and therefore involve the inability to process or integrate the experiences as wholes. Therefore, these traumatic experiences must be divided or split so that they are distributed between dissociated parts of her personality, each experienced as "not me" and resulting in a fragmented sense of self. Such parts may be experienced by the adult survivor as inner, hallucinatory voices that appear as children that cry all the time; as perpetrators that are threatening and insulting; and as others that are angry and hostile so that they are always prepared to fight. Through presentation and discussion, participants consider different types of voices, explore their differentiating characteristics and similarities, and reframe their behavior as reflecting attempts to solve problems.
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course objectives
Briefly, this course's objectives are to help you:
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1) Understand different types voices as reflecting unintegrated self-states within a traumatized self
2) Consider different types of voices as reflecting sub-systems of a whole system within a single person and as to be understood within the context of the whole person
3) Explore the differentiating characteristics of different types of voices and their underlying similarities in the way that they are organized around traumatizing experiences and based on defence against threat
4) Consider that we all have different parts of ourselves, but that we do not all experience these parts as "not me" and separated by dissociative barriers
5) Articulate with confidence voices' original protective functions and explain and reframe their behaviors as reflecting a good intention to help
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Course length: 3 - 4 hours