Library · Coping & Self-Care
Our Book Study
A year-long, chapter-by-chapter journey through Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation, learned together.
About the book
Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists by Suzette Boon, Kathy Steele, and Onno van der Hart (W. W. Norton, 2011) is a practical skills manual for people living with DID and other complex dissociative disorders. Each chapter teaches one skill area, explains why it can be especially hard when you are dissociative, and offers exercises and homework to practice between sessions.
It is one of the most useful books we know of, and our members keep coming back to it.
How our group works
Our book study is a teaching guide with peer discussion, presented by a licensed teacher. It is not a therapy group. We take the book one chapter at a time: members read ahead, practice the exercises and homework between meetings, and then come together to share what they noticed and learned.
Going through the whole book takes almost exactly one year. We are now on our fifth time through, and many members have completed the entire book, some more than once.
The book was written to be used alongside therapy. Our group works best as a companion to the work you do with your own therapist, not a replacement for it.
Our book study is open to Ivory Garden members. Learn how to join →
What we learn, chapter by chapter
Short summaries in our own words. The full chapters, exercises, and homework sheets are in the book.
Understanding dissociation
1. Understanding Dissociation
What dissociation is, how it can become a lasting pattern after early trauma, and how dissociative disorders develop. We begin a simple daily practice of being present that carries through the whole book.
2. Symptoms of Dissociation
The many ways dissociation can show up: changes in your sense of self, feeling too little, feeling too much. We also start finding our own personal “anchors” to the present.
3. Understanding Dissociative Parts of the Personality
The inner world of a dissociative person, and the different roles and purposes parts of the self can have. A big chapter that we often spread across more than one meeting.
4. Symptoms of PTSD in Complex Dissociative Disorders
What PTSD is, how its symptoms show up alongside dissociation, and why DID is understood as a complex trauma condition. Includes a daily stress-reduction practice.
5. Overcoming the Phobia of Inner Experience
Why so many survivors learn to fear and avoid their own thoughts, feelings, and body sensations, and how to gently become more curious and less afraid of what goes on inside.
Building core skills
6. Learning to Reflect
Reflection means understanding yourself and others with empathy. We look at why it can be hard with a dissociative disorder and practice reflecting, both in the moment and looking back.
7. Beginning Work with Dissociative Parts
First steps in getting to know parts of yourself, common worries about doing so, and ways to begin inner awareness and communication.
8. Developing an Inner Sense of Safety
Creating a felt sense of safety inside, including safe places for all parts of yourself.
Improving daily life
9. Improving Sleep
Common sleep problems, what makes them worse, and practical ways to sleep better, like a calming bedroom, a sleep kit, and a bedtime routine.
10. Establishing a Healthy Daily Structure
Why routines can be so hard with a dissociative disorder, keeping track of time, and building a realistic, healthy daily rhythm.
11. Free Time and Relaxation
Why rest and leisure can feel unsafe or uncomfortable, how to work through inner conflicts about it, and how to relax safely.
12. Physical Self-Care
Body awareness, energy, and caring for your physical health, including working with parts of yourself who may disagree about it.
13. Developing Healthy Eating Habits
The many meanings food and eating can carry, common struggles, and gentle steps toward healthier patterns.
Memories and triggers
14. Understanding Traumatic Memories and Triggers
How traumatic memory differs from ordinary memory, how to recognize triggers, and the surprising idea of positive triggers too.
15. Coping with Triggers
Practical ways to reduce triggers in daily life and skills for coping when they happen.
16. Planning for Difficult Times
Getting ready for holidays, anniversaries, and other hard times, and balancing your own needs with obligations to others.
Emotions and thoughts
17. Understanding Emotions
What basic emotions are for, why they can feel confusing or overwhelming, and noticing how emotions feel in the body.
18. The Window of Tolerance: Learning to Regulate Yourself
The “window” where we can think and feel at the same time, and ways to come back to it when we feel too much or too little.
19. Understanding Core Beliefs
Where our deepest beliefs about ourselves and the world come from, and how to begin building more realistic, kinder ones.
20. Identifying Cognitive Errors
Common thinking traps and how to spot them, along with a practice for collecting and holding onto positive experiences.
21. Challenging Dysfunctional Thoughts and Core Beliefs
How thoughts, feelings, and actions feed each other, and how to question unhelpful thoughts and replace them with realistic ones.
22. Coping with Anger
Understanding anger, why it can feel frightening or out of reach, and safer ways to notice and express it.
23. Coping with Fear
Understanding fear and how it shows up for trauma survivors, and ways to feel steadier when fear takes over.
24. Coping with Shame and Guilt
The difference between shame and guilt, the old “scripts” shame can follow, and ways to ease both.
Working together inside
25. Coping with the Needs of Inner Child Parts
Understanding young parts of yourself and caring for their needs, plus using inner cooperation to solve everyday problems.
26. Coping with Self-Harm Sensitive topic
Understanding what self-harm can be trying to do, helping parts of yourself who are involved, and finding other ways to cope. Crisis support →
27. Improving Decision Making Through Inner Cooperation
Why decisions can be so hard when parts disagree, and techniques for making them together, including an inner meeting space.
Relationships
28. The Phobias of Attachment and Attachment Loss
What healthy relationships look like, how trauma affects closeness, and the push-pull between fearing closeness and fearing loss.
29. Resolving Relational Conflict
Basic skills for working through conflict, and why it can be extra hard with a dissociative disorder.
30. Coping with Isolation and Loneliness
The difference between isolation and loneliness, reflecting on your own experience, and steps toward connection.
31. Learning to Be Assertive
Basic assertiveness skills, the ways we avoid speaking up, and helping parts of yourself cooperate so you can ask for what you need.
32. Setting Healthy Personal Boundaries
What healthy and unhealthy boundaries look like, finding your own comfortable closeness and distance, and preparing to set boundaries.
Book: Boon, S., Steele, K., & van der Hart, O. (2011). Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists. W. W. Norton. Summaries on this page are written by Ivory Garden in our own words.
If you’re struggling right now, you don’t have to wait. Find immediate crisis support →
