Today on How We Can Heal Podcast, Lisa Danylchuk and Christine Forner break down dissociation, mindfulness, and securefulness. Even before becoming a therapist, Christine had always been exposed to trauma work. As she words it, Christine is someone whose more 'centered when around other people's challenges.' Today, Christine helps us understand what securefulness means, the challenges to mindfulness and dissociation, why she believes mindfulness is our parent brain as humans, and much more.
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Dissociation and Mindfulness – Two Different Sides
Christine, during the interview, describes how she's come to realize the polarity of dissociation and mindfulness as two opposing brain and body states. For her, dissociation is both concrete and abstract. The same thing with mindfulness. When a person is dissociative or mindful, either way, they'll experience feeling altered in the beginning. They think differently, hence why they're both in polar states.
Because they're two different points from two parallel extremes, aiming for the other while currently in the opposing state can often create a challenging transition. When a person is dissociated, a therapist suggesting mindfulness as an initial aid to the issue may seem like someone waking up a patient in the middle of open-heart surgery.
About Christine Forner:
Christine Forner, B.A., B.S.W., M.S.W., R.S.W., has over thirty-five years of experience working with individuals with Trauma, Post Traumatic Stress Disorders, Traumatic Dissociation, Developmental Trauma, and Dissociative Disorders.
Christine started her career as a public educator for a sexual assault center, moving to a domestic violence center, and eventually was drawn to working at a feminist-based organization that focused on long-term counseling for women at a very low fee. It was here that she began her passion for working with individuals who experience traumatic dissociation.
Starting her own private practice in 2011, she has specialized training in EMDR, Ego State Therapy, Meditation, and Mindfulness for severely traumatized people and is a certified Sensorimotor Psychotherapist. Receiving a degree in both Woman's Studies and Social Work, Christine has a unique background that helps individuals understand that much of human suffering is a side effect of an enormous number of traumatic experiences.
Christine teaches locally and at an international level on dissociation, complex trauma, the intersection of dissociation and mindfulness, as well as the role that misogyny and the patriarchy play in the origination and perpetuation of complex trauma dissociation, and the many layers of psychopathy.
Christine has won several Presidential awards, a Mid-Life career award, and is an International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation Fellow. She was the President of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation in 2019, served on the board of the ISSTD since 2010, and was the ISSTD treasurer from 2012 to 2017.
Outline of the episode:
- [03:37] Getting exposed to trauma at the age of 16
- [05:33] My clients taught me how to be a therapist
- [11:59] When and how did Christine get into mindfulness?
- [18:00] When we're in a dissociative state…
- [24:01] What does mindfulness feel like for someone whose extremely dissociative?
- [30:37] Mindfulness is a relational thing
- [36:03] It's really about how humans raise they're young; it's a human defense mechanism — mindfulness
- [43:22] What is securefulness?
- [47:33] I get centered when I'm with other people
- [52:05] A beginner's initial steps to mindfulness
Resources:
Christine is the author of Dissociation, Mindfulness and Creative Meditations: Trauma-informed practices to facilitate growth (Routledge, 2017).
Christine's article on Dissociation & Mindfulness
Christine Forner B.A., B.S.W., M.S.W., R.S.W. (2019) What Mindfulness can Learn about Dissociation and what Dissociation can learn from Mindfulness, Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 20:1, 1-15, DOI: 10.1080/15299732.2018.1502568:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15299732.2018.1502568
Perspectives of Dissociative Identity Response Edited by Emily Christensen available at: https://www.systemspeak.org/books
Danylchuk, L. (2022). THE CENTRALITY OF CARE. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 23(1), 1-7.:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15299732.2022.2028465
Transcription:
Christine Forner 0:00
The challenging part about talking about this is that dissociation in itself is is sort of concrete and abstract. It's not necessarily a clear black and white thing to comprehend. And to see and to experience. It's not terribly predictable. And the same thing is sort of with mindfulness. Mindfulness is also this abstract. You know, state of being that in many ways at the beginning, it's kind of similar to dissociation.
Lisa Danylchuk 0:36
Hello, and welcome to the how we can heal podcast. My name is Lisa Danylchuck and I created this podcast to share deep conversations that encouraged us to move through life's toughest circumstances. Let's get talking about how we can heal. Our guest today is Christine Forner. Christine foreigner has over 35 years of experience working with people coping with trauma, post traumatic stress, traumatic dissociation, developmental trauma, and dissociative disorders. She has specialized training in EMDR, Ego State Therapy, meditation and mindfulness and is a Certified Sensorimotor Psychotherapist. She's earned degrees in women's studies in social work, and teaches internationally on dissociation, complex trauma and the intersection of dissociation and mindfulness. Christine has been awarded the Mid Career Achievement Award, Presidential Award of Distinction. And as a fellow of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, or ISSTD. She served as the president of ISSTD in 2019. Worked on the board of directors since 2010, and was the ISSTD Treasurer from 2012 to 2017. Christine is also the author of Dissociation, Mindfulness and Creative Meditations, Trauma Tnformed Practices to Facilitate Growth. Christine, like Kris, who was on episode two of this podcast, is a magical unicorn. She comes to this work with deep experience and fresh eyes, always seeking deeper levels of understanding. She and I connected at a conference about 15 years ago, and became fast friends. And I'm very happy to share her with you today. Let's welcome Christine to the show. All right, ladies and gentlemen, and people of all genders and backgrounds and everything. Welcome, Christine Forner to the how we can heal podcast.
Christine Forner 2:32
Hello, hello. Hi, Lisa. Hi, everyone.
Lisa Danylchuk 2:35
Hi. I'm so happy to have you here. It makes me want to do this again.
Christine Forner 2:44
We're exceeding and appropriate.
Lisa Danylchuk 2:46
Here she is. Yay. So I know Christine very well. We have known each other for a very long time. We've worked together, laugh together, presented together. And I really want to just share some of I want to share some of your early work today want to share a little bit of the foundations around mindfulness and dissociation because I still work with a lot of folks who are learning about dissociation still feel a little bit confused by it, or who are working in yoga environments and want to be able to, like, offer resources when they're not sure if someone's dissociating or they're not sure if they're doing something that's helpful or harmful. So, before we get into all that, let's just talk a little bit about you. How did you get into trauma work?
Christine Forner 3:35
Um, well, I think I've been doing trauma work in one form or another since I was about 16 years old. I went into him, beauty culture, which is like hairdressing school. My dad, this was like, way back in grade 10. And my dad was like, You're never gonna make any money. You're never gonna make any money doing that. So I was like, what else can I do? And I really liked working. I really liked people. I thought that I really wanted to help people. I clearly remember like, having that feeling even way back when I was 15 or 16 years old. I clearly remember, you know, being in high school and thinking that I really wanted to help people, but I didn't have any sort of anything more specific than that. So I started to sort of test the waters and I started volunteering at this place called the Distress Center. And there was this small area called the Teen Line. And so I would go I think about once a month, maybe once every two weeks I'd go and do a shift on this teen line. And almost immediately I was dealing with like intense suicide calls. And I was dealing with intense you know, crying and sadness and, and just this level of of challenging experiences that these young teens that the young teens are recalling. And the other that really struck me is how centered is probably the best word, because I didn't really become calm. But I became centered and focused whenever I with someone who was in distress. And I remember many years later because I ended up being like a supervisor. I remember many years laters running into somebody I supervised, like when I was 17, or 18 years old. They're now a Clinical Psychologist. And they said how weird it was that all of this chaos was going on, and I was centered. And so I've always sort of been centered. And then I went and got a diploma in social work, because I have a learning disability and my grades weren't so great. So I had to do a two year college route instead of a four year bachelor route in social work. I'm really glad I did it. I knew very early on that I struggled academically, but I was very good personably. I was able to really, I was comfortable with these situations. My first practicum I really wanted to work with teens. And I had my choice of working as a Sexual Assault Public Educator with elementary, junior high, and high school. Or I had a choice of working at this place called the Kirby Center, which is like with senior citizens, and I was like 19 years old. I didn't want to work with senior citizens, so I chose the sexual assault route. I didn't really want to work in the sexual assault center either. But, you know, very shortly in there I was I was learning about how prevalent it was how common it was, I was learning about sexual assault at 19 years of age. Then I ended up getting a Women's Studies degree graduating from that, still having difficulty getting into a Bachelors of Social Work degree. And we ended up moving outside of Calgary and I got my first job at a domestic violence shelter. So you know, straight off the bat, I'm sort of in that frontline. And that that direct crisis situation. And I never felt, I always got centered. I never was terribly confused. I was never terribly, like I was never frightened about the job that I was doing. I always felt centered. I worked at the domestic violence shelter for about two and a half years had a child. And it was after having my son that I realized that I really didn't want to be working at domestic violence shelters. So I started going around and asking for jobs, and I really had no business asking for. But I did run into a place where I bugged them enough and told them that I bet you I'm really good at this. And they it was a place that specialized in treating women it was a feminist based organization that really believed that therapy, good therapy should be available to everybody it and price shouldn't be getting in the way. So we had a lower fee. We had no time limit. So I can see people for a long time. And it was just for women. So it was it was the perfect spot for very traumatized people to to go get some counseling, and they were mentoring me. I ended up actually mentoring and self teaching myself an awful lot. And this is like 1998 And my very first client was an extremely traumatized person. My second client was an extremely traumatized person, they all they both had DID right from the get go. So my therapeutic chops were like from the very beginning with very, very, very traumatized people. And I think in hindsight, knowing what I know, and knowing that I've been in this business for 30, some odd years, 35 years, I think 34-35 years. I'm really actually glad that I was in that of the time and of a generation where the clients taught me how to be a therapist much more than going to school and getting indoctrinated into what certain people believed didn't happen or did happen. And I I'm very grateful that I sort of conned my way into getting my first job.
Lisa Danylchuk 9:09
I don't know that you coned. I think maybe you advocated.
Christine Forner 9:12
I charmed my way into it. It's probably a much better job.
Lisa Danylchuk 9:16
Maybe people could see your skill.
Christine Forner 9:18
I think that they could because like when they asked me what I was gonna do, I sort of said I was a eclectic, but I did say that I was very good at it. And I was always centered. And even from that very first session, I was centered. There's just something about being in a room with a really frightened human being that evokes this grounding centering reaction inside of me that has been there from the very beginning and it's still here today. So you know, yeah, I think it's possible that that centering was was seen and we did a line on very, very, very, like a lot of different things and it was an excellent fit and I worked there for 13 years. I got I got a lot of my fundamental experiences as a therapist in that organization. I ended up going back to school and getting a second bachelor's in Social Work. I went back to school and got my Masters. And it was during my Master's. It was actually like, 2005 my life, my personal life was unraveling quite badly. And my mom, my mom said, you gotta go take this class. It was the strangest oddest class that I've ever taken, and probably ever will take. But I'm really grateful that's where I started. It was a class learning how it was called a Spiritual Intensive and it was teaching us how to tap in to be a psychic. And what she did at these classes is she started us straight off on meditating. They were very, like, it's not very a mindfulness kind of basic type of meditating. It's a very sort of a bugaboo out there meditating. But it started to change. It started to change me and I started sleeping, and I started feeling myself in a different way. I started to experience myself in a different way. And I could feel changes inside of myself, the more I was taught how to listen to my intuition is kind of basically what this class did.
Lisa Danylchuk 11:07
So I want to back up for a second, because you mentioned that you had those early clients who had a lot of trauma who taught you, you know, who had dissociative symptoms too. Where did you learn about dissociation? Was it from those clients
Christine Forner 11:20
It was from the clients, but also one of my supervisors. She was she also worked with multiplicity. And she handed me Colin Ross's textbooks from the late 80s or mid 80s. And I read it from cover to cover, it's probably one of the few textbooks that I've actually read from cover to cover. And it was fascinating to me, I was I was I've been hooked ever since.
Lisa Danylchuk 11:44
So you saw it in the clients. You had a supervisor who also understood it, and you're able to get access to some pretty solid reading early on? So and then when did you start practicing mindfulness with clients?
Christine Forner 11:57
Yeah. Yeah
Lisa Danylchuk 11:57
Awesome
Christine Forner 11:57
So I was I started realizing that I was getting some benefit from the type of meditation that I was learning, so I started introducing it to my clients. And it wasn't until, so this is like 2005. It probably wasn't until 2007 -2008 that I started putting the pieces together. Well it was actually 2006. When we were both at that conference that we didn't know we were both at the conference at it was Psychotherapeutic Meditation put on by Harvard back in 2006.
Lisa Danylchuk 12:27
Oh, right. And the Mindfulness Conference in Worcester or something? Somewhere in Massachusetts.
Christine Forner 12:32
It was in Boston. I was staying in a hotel and just down the road was a castle, because I remember that it was the first time I ever went anywhere by myself. So it was it was very exciting. But it was in that that conference that I started realizing the type of mindfulness or the type of meditation I was doing was not the type of meditation that was being talked about at this conference. So a curiosity got evoked in me, like, what was I doing? What are they doing? And how does this work? And by this time, I also started becoming very interested in the neurobiology of trauma, the neurobiology of dissociation. And I started becoming very curious by the neurobiology of mindfulness. And so this is 2005-2006, I went back and got my Master's. And as I was writing my thesis for my Master's, that's what I really started diving into the research and looking at the similarities and the differences between what the brain and body. And we have to include the body because it's not just the brain. What the brain and body does when it's in a mindful state versus what the brain and body does when it's in a dissociative state. And it was around that 2008-2009 period, as I'm writing my thesis, that it really occurred to me that dissociation mindfulness were completely rival polar opposite brain and body states.
Lisa Danylchuk 13:55
Yes, and I've heard you say that a number of times, and I know you've written about this. So break it down for us. How would you describe dissociation and mindfulness as rival brain activity?
Christine Forner 14:05
So I think the the, the challenging part about about talking about this is that dissociation in itself is is sort of concrete and abstract. It's not necessarily a clear black and white thing to comprehend. And to see and to experience. It's not terribly predictable. And the same thing is sort of with mindfulness. Mindfulness is also this abstract, you know, state of being that, in many ways, at the beginning, it's kind of similar to dissociation. They're both when when somebody starts to go into a mindful state, they will feel a little altered, they will feel a little different as everything starts to change. And when people dissociate, they're going to feel a little altered and feel a little different. Now what do we mean by alter? What do we mean by different? Typically, when somebody's dissociating the body has has quickly assessed in absolute speedy milliseconds is being present, is feeling my feelings, is knowing my environment, is being socially connected going to save me or kill me? And the body in these milliseconds will decide, is movement the thing that I need to save me? Or is holding still the thing I need to save me it really does play into us being a creature that actually evolved in an environment where lots of things ate us. And we don't really even think about this when we think about dissociation. Because so many of us like when was the last time you were frightened by a tiger attack? It's not a familiar experience. And most of us don't have that experience. When we're in a state of mindfulness, it's the polar opposite it is when we are entirely and completely safe neuro biologically, biomechanically safe. And, and the thing that makes us safe in an environment where everything wants to eat us is being surrounded by as many people as possible. And when I talk about these sort of relational things, it's not the first thing that people think about when they think about mindfulness. People think about mindfulness is being this altered state of, of being in a place where you're non judgmental, whatever that means. And when you're in a place of observing moment to moment experiences, kind of whatever that means. Because those are pretty once again, super abstract and super subjective terms to an act.
Lisa Danylchuk 16:50
But they're the most common instructions for mindfulness, right, sort of find stillness, try to practice not judgment, or, you know, sort of letting things go and letting thoughts go through without getting immersed by them. I mean, I think it it does boil down to an instruction place that a lot of people can go, oh, okay, I can try to do that. I kind of have a sense of what that is. But like you said, it's still abstract, we still don't know my experience of mindfulness, your experience of mindfulness. I mean, we could go in there with like, you know, reading brainwaves and to see, oh, you're in an alpha state, and you're in a beta state and those kinds of things, but. But to back up, it makes so much sense to me, in terms of, like dissociation is numbing, right? It's like not wanting to feel the pain of whatever's happening. It's sort of pulling away from it. Whereas mindfulness is like, bringing all your attention on it. So even in that very simple perspective. It makes a ton of sense to me why then, asking someone to be mindful, who's coping, you know, whose safety lies in dissociation would bring up some conflict?
Christine Forner 17:59
Yeah, because because when we're in a dissociative state, it's not just like, like it's not wanting to stay safe. It's the central nervous system actually driving the train. The instructions to dissociate the body's instructions to dissociate come from very, very, like brain structures that are very low in our, in our system. They're very close to the brain stem, which actually doesn't even move up into the brain system yet. It is highly fueled by internal naturally created opioids and cannabinoids, so heroin and pot. That's basically like, like, if you want a comparison of kind of what it's like to dissociate. It's kind of like being really high, or it's kind of like being injected with some sort of anesthetic, because that is it is a very powerful, powerful, powerful, powerful neurobiology neurobiological biomechanical reaction inside a human body in mind. The other thing that happens is not just that chemical response. When when the human body is dissociating, the insula is involved, quite a few brain structures are involved. But the insula is basically the gatekeeper between all the neurobiological information that's coming from the body up and it sends it up to the to the front brain. It's sort of like the insula is like, Here, here's all my sense of perception. Here's all my feelings. You take this front brain. What do you make of this? Okay, that's what you make of it? Then we can go back into the body. And that's what's happening to us on the inside. Dissociation stops that process from happening.
Lisa Danylchuk 19:33
And it's so interesting, because as soon as you say insula, I think of the time that I spent with Sara Lazar at Mass General studying Mindfulness. And the the work that, you know, I was a part of as a student, just mostly data entry was tracking how the insula actually grew over time, like change the structure of the brain to practice mindfulness meditation. I can't remember. I'm sure it's in the papers actly what kind of mindfulness meditation people were practicing,
Christine Forner 20:03
Probably very traditional Mindfulness Based Meditations, but I think I think, I think it's important to really note that there's all sorts of different ways that we can get into a mindful state. The most common type is mindfulness based meditations. But there's lots of things that evoke that state. And you can see, like, if we start to understand what that insula is doing, right? Like here is all the information front brain. What do you make of it? That is a type of awareness of internal body sensations, and dissociation starts that process. The other thing that happens when we're in a dissociative state is the front brain structures, the ones that are really about thinking and planning and organizing, and even imagining, they change. They become hyper aroused. So when we're in a dissociative state, the body becomes kind of frozen and numb, and the front brain starts to really start to activate. So we can be up in our head thinking and not connected to anything in our body. And then the hard part is with dissociation is that you are numb. You cannot feel, so you don't know. You might be acting weird, or doing things that you don't really have control over, because your body's in a state of terror. But because of the dissociative component, you're not aware. And this is once again why discovering that mindfulness is the complete opposite of this. Mindfulness is about awareness of what's going on in our bodies. Awareness of what's our effect is doing. Aware of our internal experiences.
Lisa Danylchuk 20:15
And that's such an important point. Because when I first heard the, the research about, you know, your prefrontal cortex is kind of going and it's like you're in your head and not connected to your body. I was like, oh, my God, that's me. I'm always in my head. I'm always thinking all this stuff. Then I was like, oh, wait, but I'm also super aware, if someone walks in the room, how I feel internally. I'm super aware, if I have to pee. I'm super aware of I just got a little bit sad. What was that about? Right? So there's a difference between being an overthinker, which I'll just put myself out there as one and being sort of, I think of it as like spinning wheels. And then they're like, this is where I've had a ton of clients who were like, what do you mean? Where do I feel that in my body? Right, yes, that classic somatic psychotherapist question. Okay, you're feeling anger? Well, where do you feel that in your body? And they're like, I don't? I don't know how to answer that. Like, what does that even mean? And so that's where, you know, that's a signal if you haven't gotten one already. Okay. There's, there's a lot going on here. But this person hasn't really feeling it's almost like, you know, a flower on the top with the roots not dropping down.
Christine Forner 22:52
Yeah, yeah. Or another way of looking at it? Is it more like a duck on a lake? Right? You look on the duck on the surface, and it looks all calm on the top. But on the bottom, there's all this activation, and they're unaware. And it's, I can't highlight enough what on aware means? They don't know. They have no clue. They have no connection. They have, like, so you can you can have a lot of people who really think that they're aware, or really think that that what they're thinking is spot on and accurate and correct. But until the body is involved, until it's an embodied experience. We have to put a question mark there. We have to say, okay, if they can't feel their anger. We've got to put a question mark. If they're struggling to, you know, even just close their eyes for a second, and be internally focused, and they open their eyes and they can't handle it. That's a really good clue that what's going on inside of them is not going to match what's going on in their head. That's incredibly dissociative in nature.
Lisa Danylchuk 24:01
So what might be some common challenges with dissociation and mindfulness?
Christine Forner 24:08
Well, you know, often depending on on the level of dissociation we're talking about, because there's different degrees of dissociation. Sometimes it is just a body numbing all the way up to people who've been numbing since birth, because their environments are so stressful. And we have to really be mindful, once again, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be someone who appears as someone who has been experiencing this level of distress. There's a lot of high functioning people out there with a lot of traumatic childhoods. So we can't really make assumptions, but the more dissociative somebody is, the more they more they utilize dissociation as a way of getting through the world, or getting through their day or getting through, whatever. The more mindfulness is kind of like, you know, I know this is a graphic description, but it's pretty accurate of what it's like. It could be like waking up in the middle of open heart surgery.
Lisa Danylchuk 25:10
Oof.
Christine Forner 25:12
Yeah. And I think as, as clinicians, when we ask someone to be mindful, that's always in the back of my head. Like, I'm always asking questions to sort of assess how connected is this person to their body? How dissociative is this person. And I won't dive into mindfulness from the get go, because mindfulness is incredibly powerful. It is, as powerful in the opposite direction as dissociation. It's like dissociation is sort of one end of the spectrum. There's a couple other I think, ways of being that are a little bit further on that spectrum. And mindfulness is that is the opposite. Mindfulness is where we are fully aware of our bodies. We are comfortable in our emotion, we can regulate our effect. So even if we have a sad effect, or a scared effect, or a grieving effect, or a broken heart effect, we can stay sane and relatively present and work through that then emotion that's mindfulness is in charge of those things.
Lisa Danylchuk 26:16
I'm thinking of so many things as you're talking. Go ahead, you had one more thought?
Christine Forner 26:20
No, go.
Lisa Danylchuk 26:21
I was just gonna say, first thing I was thinking of is when I was working in a clinic with commercial sexual exploitation, so these were all they were all young women at the time in the program. And we wanted to bring yoga in, right? And we're like, oh, these these people who've experienced really significant trauma. Where should we start? And we decided to start. And it was at this place that was called the spa, the Safe Place Alternative. And so we decided to start with manicures. Like, because if you're, you know, definitely they might have had experiences related to trauma that relate to their hands. But there's also a sense of distance from your central organs. It's a lot easier to sort of relate between your hands. How close you want to get, how far. So we started with, just like lotion and nail polish, and like, options of. And it was, you know, coming from a place of self care. I remember talking to another clinician that was like, what, like, how is that yoga? And why? Like, why wouldn't you just have them do a meditation? It's like, well, maybe get there, but we're just gonna see how this goes. First, we're just gonna try something that like. You know, a lot of them would get their nails done anyway, so it wasn't like a new concept. We're just gonna start here and maybe bring a little different perspective to it. See how it goes.
Christine Forner 27:53
How wonderfully intuitive of you all.
Lisa Danylchuk 27:56
Oh, like months later, we had yoga happening, you know. But it was like we did very gradual. All right, and process, you know. Letting it be casual. Let it be opt in, opt out processing. And then slowly over time, we had an ongoing yoga class, but I think it just framed it and like, gave a little stepping stone titration lots of options.
Christine Forner 28:19
Think about it like dials, right? So when you've experienced a fair or even a lot of trauma, depending on what, and what I mean by trauma is I mean, central nervous system trauma. When the central nervous system is beyond its capacity. When it is needing something and that need isn't being met. The human body will experience all of our needs, if they're not being met, eventually as very painful things. Just like the need to eat. The need to sleep. The need to pee. The need to drink. When our needs aren't met. That need is communicated through pain and dissociation. Underneath dissociation is excruciating pain. Underneath dissociation is experiences that are nearly like so unfathomably brutal, especially with people who experience a lot of dissociation or people who dissociate a lot. But any type of dissociation is a anesthetic. We have to remember that it is there to avoid pain. So even if you're dissociating a little bit, what's underneath that is pain. And it's pain that the body has deemed to be too much or too chronic. And it's not getting met and it it has to turn it off. And it probably does this for several reasons. One of the main reasons is probably to attempt to stay attached to anybody and everybody that we can, even though what's underneath is a great big a bunch of pain. So we have to remember that when a body is experiencing this kind of chronic stress. Healing is incredibly counter intuitive. A body that's in that level of distress, or if it's always been in that level of distress, it doesn't understand the land of mindfulness. It doesn't know that it exists. It doesn't know that there is something there inside our neurobiology designed to catch all of this stuff, so to speak. But the thing about mindfulness is that no matter how much you practice it, or no matter how much you get good at it, it's still a really relational thing.
Lisa Danylchuk 30:30
Yes. And that is something I would love for us to talk about now. What role does relationship play in mindfulness in your brain today?
Christine Forner 30:42
In my brain, okay, this is Christine going out on her going out on a limb. This is the first time I'm saying this out loud and in public. I'm, like 99% certain, and I've been I've been studying this for, what is it? 17 years now? I've been looking at this for 17 years now. I'm pretty sure that the mindful brain is the brain of the homosapien birthing adult.
Lisa Danylchuk 31:14
So okay, so slow that down. The mindful brain is the brain of the homosapien birthing adult.
Christine Forner 31:21
The earth birthing mother, birthing father.
Lisa Danylchuk 31:24
Okay. So the mindful brain is the parenting brain.
Christine Forner 31:29
Is the parent brain for humans. And I think it evolved to assist with what we need as a species to fully develop.
Lisa Danylchuk 31:44
And what do we need as a species to fully develop?
Christine Forner 31:47
We need to have that mindful brain working.
Lisa Danylchuk 31:49
Well, what I think is we need care, right? And in order to get care, we need some brain that's watching if we're in pain. And if we're showing those signals that we're free, or we're tired, or we're this or that or thirsty. We need our diet changed or whatever.
Christine Forner 32:04
We're so nonverbal, so non communicative. And our needs are so great for such a long period of time. Yeah, that we do not compare to any other animal on this planet by even close. I think like elephants might be one of the longest birth to maturity lifespan. So I think it's four years before an adult, like an elephant becomes a full adult. For us, it's 25 years, as a quarter of a century, that it takes a human to fully develop.
Lisa Danylchuk 32:43
That's a long time.
Christine Forner 32:44
It's a long time, and seriously for like at least 15 to 17 of those years. There's active parenting going on. Yes. Like not just don't just yeah, we're living in the same herd, here's some shared wheat or whatever. Parents are still meeting so many relational needs and physiological needs, and biological needs and developmental needs of their offspring for over like two decades. The other thing that makes me think that mindfulness is part of human care, is because the mindful brain does not grow all that well when we are frightened. It doesn't do like it it fear really effects this brain structures. So then, like, I'm thinking. I've been wondering this, you know, for 15 years, 17 years? Why? Why, why? And the answer, that it's just part of spirituality, part of human being never made sense to me, especially when I started reading Dan Siegel stuff about how the brain structures that are that are activated and engaged when we are securely attached are the same brain structures that we are using when we develop mindfulness, the practice in the state of mindfulness. So when I heard that I was like, bing. That's starting to make sense to me, because then it starts to make sense how mindfulness and dissociation are rival brain activities. And then and then I, you know, I still don't know how many years I've been doing this, I still will wake up in the middle of the night and go, oh, my gosh, that makes this so much sense. Like the fact that when I'm working with somebody who has more of a PTSD injury, so that's sort of an adult onset, scared that won't really get out of the body or can't work itself through. They're not experiencing intense pain. They are experiencing intense fear. But when somebody is working through relational injuries, injuries that happen from other people's harm or other people's neglect, it is the most painful thing a human being can experience. So once again, I'm like, ah, people injury hurts. Car injuries or tsunami injuries or you know, um, even forest fire injuries, they are frightening, they are disruptive, but they don't really cause the same sort of pain.
Lisa Danylchuk 35:10
And the response that people have to those things is usually a big part of the healing process. So when something isn't human relational, and people get the human relational element, what I've seen, just in my clinical practice is that that healing trajectory feels very different than the one where there was a, you know, fill in the blank forest fire or whatever example you just gave. And then there, the human piece isn't there. When they're looking for it, and they don't get it. Or when there's some, some element even of neglect or absence of presence, or like that makes healing from the tsunami, forest fire, earthquake, car accident that much more challenging.
Christine Forner 35:58
Right. The other thing that also makes like, you know, when we're sort of talking about sort of the different types. When somebody does have sort of a PTSD injury, or an active defense injury. So an injury that, you know, there's still hope in the body. There's still movement that wants to happen, either away from danger, but mostly towards safety, safety of other people. But if they move, they'll often get almost immediate relief. If they do something, they almost get immediately relief. There's not the same for people with dissociative disorders with dissociative disorders. The body is telling it to freeze to hold still to play dead. And movement makes it very frightening. But it's also much more delicate relational attachment works. So it all of these things almost weekly, monthly, I'm getting these more and more evidence that mindfulness is really about how human beings raise their young. And I think mindfulness in many ways is humans defense mechanism. And all the things that go in mindfulness, the attachment piece, the attunement piece, the regulation piece, the empathy piece, the internal awareness piece, the, the capacity. When somebody is mindful, they can feel other people. And when you're mindful, you can feel felt by other people. There's a common piece that not just makes us feel better, like you said, it actually changes both structure and function. Yeah, very few things in this world change structure and function that we really, really know of. There's a lot of people who will look at the brain and say, oh, this function is, is happening or this structure is affected. But all of those people who have structure affected are also very frightened, and also experiencing often a lot of social rejection or rejection.
Lisa Danylchuk 37:54
So one thing that makes a lot of sense to me here is the frightening aspect, and our brain responding to that, versus the attunement and the safety that comes with the attunement and connection to other people. Right. So it's like the attunement to be able to say, oh, I am hungry, or I, you know, to be able to take care of my own needs, is very much connected to to the experience of having someone else whether it's a parent or a therapist, be able to, to connect with that. So there's this element of personal internal awareness, mindfulness. There's the shared effects of that, that, you know, I can be more aware of myself, I can be more aware of you. And then within that is this land of what we've started calling, securefulness. Right where it's like, because there's so much attachment stuff in here. And I don't even know if we have enough time today to quite like, spell all of that out. But I think secure attachment people are getting a little more of a sense of what that means. But it's basically describing this, like people use the word good enough parent a lot like this, this parental role where there's someone there, checking in, right? Yes, like, what do you need it? What do you need?
Christine Forner 39:14
It's so much more than just the good enough parent? Right? I think it was Ed Tronick that came up and said that if attunement happens 30%, we're fine. I'm not sure that that's actually true. I actually think that when everything you know, the more human we became, the more vulnerable we came to the elements. The more vulnerable we became to the world. The more vulnerable we became to predation. We have no natural defenses. We don't have speed. We don't have muscles. We don't have great eyesight. We don't have good smelling we don't have good hearing. We have no claws, no teeth, we don't have ink with you know, we don't have ink to spray or camouflage or anything.
Lisa Danylchuk 39:49
That'd be kinda nice. I wish I had some ink spray.
Christine Forner 39:55
But we do have mindfulness. And what mindfulness does connects humans in the way, that I think we're just on the precipice of comprehending.
Lisa Danylchuk 40:13
This is a what.
Christine Forner 40:15
This is brand new, this is like this, the the notion of, of how connected we are as a species is, you know, 1015 years old, in all of human history. So this is a very brand new notion. And even in the mindful world. The notion that it's it's part of our attachment system, much more than it's part of a spiritual system is not a very popular idea or a well known idea, right? You can get bits and pieces of that information. But the more you look at it from understanding dissociation and comparing it to attachment. When somebody is in a mindful state, and connected to another person, when they're both using attachment, and mindfulness, there's some powerful, powerful things going on. That is mostly like, you know, I think pretty a nonverbal or unconscious to people, but our central nervous systems are talking to each other all the time. Whether we're aware of it or not, mindfulness helps us become aware of it. And this is really important. When you've got a being that can't even really describe anything for three years of life. It's actually probably closer to like 15 years of life. But it's, it's this mindfulness gives me, you, anybody who uses it, the capacity to be able to feel very close, and sometimes spot on to what other people are feeling inside of us. Yeah. So I have feelings. A lot of people will say all like, you know, I'm an empath, I can feel other people's feelings. And I have to put a question to that. Are you an empath? Or are you having feelings? Like is that real empathy? Or are you detecting other people's from a hyper vigilant state, because people who are truly empathetic are not bothered. They're, they're aware of other people's feelings. And they might have to do some work to calm themselves down. But they're not disturbed or triggered by other people's feelings, because their own body can regulate everything inside of them, all of their emotions, as well as regulating other people's emotions. And I think this is something that people who've been doing long term trauma work kind of intuitively get. Because we're sitting in a room hour after hour after hour with the most sensitive and the most upset and the most freaked out and the most frightened central nervous systems that probably many people don't even, they're not even aware that they're being affected by that person who's so scared, or even even people who are really scary. Mindfulness helps us go hmm, I'm detecting a feeling it's not my feeling. It must be this feeling. So let me ask a few more attunement questions to figure out, am I close? Am I detecting what I think I'm detecting? And that attunement brings in this level of connection that you're never going to get from thought to thought thinking to thinking question a question.
Lisa Danylchuk 43:14
Yes. So how would you define securefulness?
Christine Forner 43:20
I think so. We came up with this word secure fullness, about a year and a half ago. You and I have been talking about these things for a long, long time. Like we've been talking about this, I think since 2009. You and I have have spent many hours speaking about this, but it was about a year and a half ago when it dawned on me that I think that mindfulness was that the parents, human homosapien parents were in a mindful like 100%, mindful state for at least seven, if not, like 10 years of infant's life.
Lisa Danylchuk 43:52
And I think I remember in that conversation, you pointing out, it doesn't make sense. Why? Someone like you know, the story of the Buddha sat under a tree, aware of breath, sitting, sitting, sitting and then all of a sudden feels better. Like, why would that be true? In terms of our evolution in terms of, you know, in terms of being an environment where it's not necessarily ideally safe to be alone, like what would be what would explain why that is helpful.
Christine Forner 44:30
And I think it's because that mindful brain is the brain of the homosapien birthing parents. That they're they were in 100%, mindful state, and the only way for this to happen is for us to be an owl parented species, which we are. Meaning that there would be two parents, both mother and father, with that infant 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and there would be two or three other people out parenting means that there's like many people taking care of one child. So there would have been probably three or four people taking care of those moms and dads, so that they can stay mindful. So that all of their needs are met so that they can meet their infants needs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And then the rest of the community would have been assisting those parents, if that was to happen, we would all be mindful all the time. Because those are the conditions that create mindfulness.
Lisa Danylchuk 45:20
And it just goes to I mean, I talk to a lot of people who are parenting right now and struggle with it, because of the way that you know, many societies and definitely American culture around me a setup where, you know, it's a, usually one or two parent household, and maybe some family lives sort of nearby, but it's not like there's a group of, hey, I'm gonna walk into the other room, you got this, right, there isn't that level that I think secondary level of support?
Christine Forner 45:50
We have to be really like, I'm very mindful. Once again, I'm very concerned, I'm very cautious, to not shame. It's very hard in this day and age, it's very hard in this world to raise infants the way we are neurobiologically supposed to be raised. We are we are a hearty creature. We are a fairly resilient creature. But like, I think, and understanding the world of dissociation and understanding the world of mindfulness. I know for a fact we're not supposed to be here. We're not supposed to be like this. We're not supposed to be incredibly independent, we are extraordinarily dependent. What is the thing that most of us crave, like all the time, we really want people to understand us, we really want to be heard. We really feel better when we are seen and accepted. That's all coming from the mindfulness stuff. That's all coming from the neurobiology craving, something that we don't really know, is there or should be there.
Lisa Danylchuk 46:50
And it's all interconnection, right?
Christine Forner 46:53
All of all of its interconnection, and so, so describing secure fulness, is we're talking about the Buddha and like, that makes no sense. How would this make sense. And I'm like, Well, that would make a lot of sense. And I don't think I ever would have gotten here if I didn't know so much about trauma and how the human body responds when it's traumatized. But securefulness really is the state of mindfulness in relationship to other people. That security, that secure attachment, in combination with a mindful state of present awareness, that mindful state of both your own present awareness, and another person's present awareness. And that secure full state in many, many times when I think if we circle back to what I said at the very beginning, that this has sort of been in me for a long time, I get centered, when I'm around other people. I think I move into this weird mindful state and always have, when somebody's scared in front of me. I myself will freak out and not be in a mindful state a lot. But for some reason, when I was with another human being that was in a state of suffering, in that therapeutic environment, I was able to calm down. And I, it kind of makes sense as I pull back and sort of view my life. When I first gave birth to my son, I did notice, so he was born in 97. Second child was born in 2000. Third child was born in 2003. And the first time I really got into a really deep meditative state, the first thing that reminded me it was exactly how I felt in those last couple of months of pregnancy in the first six or seven months of their birth. That I became, I think I was in a mindful state when they were born. And I was, I was, I loved being a mom. And I was very attuned to them. And I was able to feel my kids from the beginning, I was able to, especially particularly by the time, you know, my second and third came around, and I was able to trust my intuition quite a bit more. But my second child, he didn't speak till he was like three, but he, he communicated to me in a million different ways. He didn't need to speak to tell me he was hungry. He didn't need to speak to tell me that, you know, his arms were flailing, I don't know, four or five months and you could tell he like looked at me, ugh these things are really bugging me. And so I just swaddled him. I didn't swallow my first because everybody told me he didn't like it, which is not true. Infants love to be swaddled. So I swaddled him and you could just see this look of relief. Thank you. So there was there was and that to me was my mindfulness, and I think I was just born with a big ventral medial prefrontal cortex. I don't know why.
Lisa Danylchuk 49:41
I feel like you need a t-shirt that says that. I don't know I was just born with this ventral medial prefrontal cortex. What can I say?
Christine Forner 49:48
Which is the brain structure? The main brain structure that is responsible for mindfulness is the ventral medial prefrontal cortex. It's highly relational. It's very empathicaly attuned.
Lisa Danylchuk 49:59
And right behind your third eye center.
Christine Forner 50:02
Yep. Down that prosperous muscle.
Lisa Danylchuk 50:06
Prosperous. Prosperous
Christine Forner 50:08
Prosperou. Prosperous. Tomato. Tomahto.
Lisa Danylchuk 50:10
Tomato. Tomahto. Canadia. Canada.
Christine Forner 50:14
And now that I kind of know, I know this, I actually intentionally use this with every client that I work with, and works like a charm.
Lisa Danylchuk 50:26
And we've written about this in a few places all link the articles in the show notes or the link the article and then I think the other is the book chapter that just came out.
Christine Forner 50:35
I have a book right here.
Lisa Danylchuk 50:36
Can you can you show it or read the title? Because it just came out like a few weeks ago, so I don't even have a copy of it personally.
Christine Forner 50:45
It is called Perspectives of Dissociative Identity Response Edited by Emily Christensen.
Lisa Danylchuk 50:57
Of dissociative identity disorder>
Christine Forner 51:00
Perspective of Dissociative Identity Respond.
Lisa Danylchuk 51:02
Response, thank you.
Christine Forner 51:05
And ours is chapter, it's the second last chapter secure fulness of care centered approach to therapy, where we really sort of break down the science and the research that we've done to come up with this term, because I did describe to you what would this be called? What can we call this? And you were just labeling off names. And you were like, What about to careful this on length? There it is.
Lisa Danylchuk 51:33
That's the one I remember that moment. I don't remember any of the other things that we said either. But we're just thinking in that creative zone where you're just like, whatever.
Christine Forner 51:41
But yeah, this is what it it makes a lot of sense when you really start to dive deep into the relational aspects of mindfulness and the detachment of dissociation.
Lisa Danylchuk 51:53
Yes. So what would you say to someone who is really struggling to be mindful right now are struggling to feel connected right now what what kind of practices or why not?
Christine Forner 52:06
The way that I started, like I didn't do a dive deep into into mindfulness based meditation, I started with incredibly, highly visual images up at that procerus muscle. So sometimes, like we started looking at candle flames, sometimes candle flames can be pretty triggering. So I would suggest glowsticks, but you know, sort of putting yourself into a dark room and you don't have to use flame flame candle flame. There's lots of apps on on phones that you can have like a candle app or a glow stick app. What you're really doing is you're looking at the bright light. And then you don't want to burn your eyes. But you're just wanting that after image. You know, if you'd ever like the get the camera flash and you close your eyes, and you can still see the camera flash. It's watching that camera flash in that procerus muscle area, that third eye area, that area that's really on the divot between your nose and your head. And if you can see the after image of the flame, or if you can see the after image of the light, trying to focus on that for as long as possible. If that doesn't work, if that's too hard to do, I would suggest perhaps breathing in the image of colored mist air. And I because the people that I work with are so disconnected from their bodies, asking people to breathe, really messed them up, because breathing actually also starts the insula working properly. And if the insula is working properly, it can give an information dump to the front brain that's hyperactive, so it can, it can startle the system back into a dissociative response, a really intense dissociative response. So I actually invite people to fill up their sinus cavities. Like I get them to internally focus on filling up their sinus cavities, which is much with as much air as possible. And then on the outbreath blowing it out like a candle or a feather. Depending on like, you know, sometimes candles are triggering. So I'll suggest a feather or a piece of grass. And I'll get people to breathe in, filling up those sinus cavities as full as I can with colored air. And then breathing out now if you're working with somebody who's not really severely dissociative, just mildly dissociative or someone who's just sort of stressed, I will encourage them to drop into their bodies on the outbreath. So I invite them to breathe in filling up those sinus cavities as full as they will grow, go. And then on the out breath, drop, drop, drop, drop and bringing your awareness back into your body. That's going to activate those brain structures that are responsible for mindfulness.
Lisa Danylchuk 54:30
One thing I really appreciate about this is the starting with something simple like that, you know glow stick app. And then recreating the image really gives you something tangible to do. So for those folks who, for whom breathing does feel like whoa, too much. Right? It's turning on all the information or I'm connecting with my body and there's a lot in there. It's not it's not a comfortable, resourceful place to be. You know, we can look at like I can see a little green light right next to my camera right now that's recording and I can close my eyes. And I can visualize that little green light, and picture it right up in between my eyebrows. And that's relatively straightforward. And we can typically find things that are neutral or positive, and then just practice with and it's very structured. And it's very focused.
Christine Forner 55:19
Yeah. And it can be, it can be 30 seconds, it can be a minute, it can be five minutes, you're all all of it is going to help. Right? And if you're listening to your body, and following that very classic window of tolerance, if you can tolerate it, do it. It's intolerable, don't. Because mindfulness is all about growing tolerance. And dissociation is all about managing intolerance. So we want to focus on or, you know, make note of it, am I tolerating this, or not tolerating this? Another thing that can happen is also imaging using images to like, imagine that inside of your foot is a favorite color of yours, or, or imagining that you're wearing socks that are a favorite color of yours. These are all going to activate the internal awareness and internal regulation systems that are, are activated when we are in a mindful state.
Lisa Danylchuk 56:13
I got yellow socks on. Thank you.
Christine Forner 56:16
Yeah. And you can even go up to like some really wild images like, like the meditations that I used to do, she had us like flying all over the universe and going to strange planets and exploring what the surface of the planet felt like. And other times we'd go down into the ocean and walk around in the ocean, might the way I learned how to meditate was highly imaginative.
Lisa Danylchuk 56:36
Which is interesting to me, because that even makes me think of, like maladaptive daydreaming and creating other worlds which like, goes into the land of dissociation. So what I think is cool about that is you can use something perhaps like if you have a client or student who's good at this, like good at creating other worlds, or very imaginative, very visual, you can use that in a way to connect with this practice.
Christine Forner 57:05
I know, it sounds strange. But this this is one of the things that I discovered in my tiny little study during my Master's thesis was that people who saw the images that I walked them through over an eight week period. People who saw the images in that front part of the brain showed improvement. People who saw the images in the back parts of their brain are the top parts of their brain did not interesting. So you can see that I think some people were actually used to using that ventral medial prefrontal cortex area and the default mode and all the other ones that are connected to it, versus normal thinking or, or daydreaming. So like it really is paying attention to where you're seeing the images, I think, I think, in my tiny little study, I think I studied six people. So it's not like I had a number of 10,000. But it was a small little sample size of people. And they all had DID. They all had very severe DID. And the individuals who saw the images up front did show a difference in their their stress and regulation abilities, versus the people who saw the images in different parts of their head.
Lisa Danylchuk 58:13
So I know we're talking about a lot of potentially complex things. And so we'll leave some of those resource links to things that we've written together. Where can people find you? Where can they read what you've written?
Christine Forner 58:28
If you Google, Christine, dissociation and mindfulness I'm the only person who's going to show up. So you can find my information. There's lots of Google Christine Forner. There's lots of podcasts I've talked about this with. I have written a book it came out in 2017 Dissociation, Mindfulness, and Creative Meditations: Trauma-Informed Practices to Facilitate Growth is the name of it. It was published by Rutledge, so it's it's available either through Rutledge or through Google. I think it's typically less expensive on Rutledge than it is on on Amazon so you know, I would go Rutledge route. I'm available at info@associatedcounseling.ca, if you have any questions. I've been known to give people my I made meditations for the study, and handed those I made a series of five or six different small little meditations that went from very small meditations to large. I probably if time serving I probably rerecord it, but it's good enough. There's some things that I there's lots of things I've learned since then, but I'm I can I send a Google link to it.
Lisa Danylchuk 59:48
Maybe we can set up like a specific page for that too. So you don't get too much email, like very generous of you are very generous of you. I know you're super busy too. And then just one more question before we wrap up for today and I feel like we could talk forever? Because we do. And we will. And I'm sure you'll be back on for another conversation. But I'm just curious what's giving you hope right now?
Christine Forner 1:00:08
What is giving me hope right now. In all honesty, this will very, very wonderfully lead into part two. I think I've discovered the origin of misogyny.
Lisa Danylchuk 1:00:22
That is giving you hope right now. That is giving you fuel and fire and passion.
Christine Forner 1:00:27
It really is I've written I've written a non, I've written a fiction about it that I'm trying to get published. And I'm starting to work on the nonfiction, I'm going to try and get that published, too. I really want it to be like the body keeps the score. It's sort of this melding of my Women's Studies background, my Dissociation background, and my Mindfulness background, all just making this sort of tripod of possibilities. And I really think if people started to comprehend how much we need each other, and how weird the world is, because we don't have each other, we might actually be able to eliminate the origins of hate and care. And that's what I mean by misogyny, and eliminate the need, or the idealization that we have in the patriarchy, which in many ways is the idealization of psychopathy. And understanding these things. Oh, my goodness, it's making me super excited.
Lisa Danylchuk 1:01:27
Just a little light thought to leave. It's like puppies, kittens, butterflies, finding the origin of misogyny and patriarchy, you know.
Christine Forner 1:01:38
And I'm pretty sure I found it. Because everywhere I look, it's like, there it is.
Lisa Danylchuk 1:01:42
Well, I know you've got a lot of writing going on about that. So I'm excited to learn more and share and hear more about that. But for today, we'll wrap folks up with a little bit of applause for Christine Forner. Thank you very much for being here and for sharing your wonderful, thoughtful ideas with us. And I look forward to bringing you back again.
Christine Forner 1:02:06
Anytime I love this.
Lisa Danylchuk 1:02:07
Thanks, Christine. You're wonderful.
Christine Forner 1:02:09
Thank you, everybody. Bye
Lisa Danylchuk 1:02:15
Thanks so much for listening. My hope is that you walk away from these episodes feeling supported, and like you have a place to come to find the hope and inspiration you need to take your next small step forward. I do want to make sure it's clear that this podcast isn't offering any prescriptions. It's not advice or any kind of diagnosis. Your decisions are in your hands, and we encourage you to consult with any relevant health care professionals you may need to support you through your unique path of healing. For more information and resources, please visit my website how we can heal.com. There you'll find tons of helpful resources and the full transcript of each show. You can also click the podcast menu to submit requests for upcoming topics and guests. Before we wrap up, I want to send thanks to our guest today, to Christine O'Donnell and Celine Baumgartner of bright sided podcasting, and to everyone who helps support this podcast directly and indirectly. Alex, thanks for taking the dogs out while I record. I'd also like to give a shout out to my brother Matt. He passed away in 2002. He wrote this music and recorded it and it makes my heart so happy to share it with you now.
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