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Colette Lord, PhD

@traumatherapysd

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Licensed Psychologist. Certified EMDR therapist & Consultant specializing in CPTSD, dissociation and gender affirming care. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈Ally

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Judith Lewis Herman writes in Trauma and Recovery, “The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told. Murder will out. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.”

I think this is a powerful reminder as we see this playing out in the world right now.

You see it in the urge to deny the on-going violence our government is committing against the trans community and immigrants (to name a few).

You see it in the urge to turn a blind eye and tune out of the on-going global atrocities, some being supported or committed by the US and some not.

And some of this is born of our denial of the history of this country and the atrocities it has committed. But the echoes of what was done continue to reverberate in our collective unconscious, in the way we relate to each other and treat one another.

But healing on a collective or individual level requires speaking about the bad things that have happened to us or that we have done to others. Otherwise, anything we build is built on a shaky foundation.

We must speak our terrible truths so that they no longer fester in the darkness poisoning us. Only then can we move onto true healing. by @traumatherapysd

Seven years ago Sadie came into this world!

She was such a little nugget and I can’t believe how time flies.

#PuppyLife #DogOfTheDay #Dogs #CavalierKingCharlesSpaniel #CavalierPuppy by @traumatherapysd

Parts are not the problem, they are the solution to a problem. The groundwork for the development of these parts is typically laid before explicit memory.

Parts have roles or functions that they developed to adapt to specific needs of a child in response to their environment, the demands of parental figures, or their internal needs.

It is our work to get curious about these roles and functions, to better understand parts and their role in the system.

If you are an EMDR clinician looking to learn how to work with folks who have dissociative parts, I have developed a training and am available for consultation as well.

Info available in my bio. by @traumatherapysd

Some quotes I’ve recently read that spoke to me and I think will speak to you...

That's the power of words: twenty-six little letters can paint a whole universe. -Jay Kristoff in Godsgrave

Words carry so much power, they can inspire, they can harm, they can affirm, and they can deny.

A pity then, that the good waste their time fearing that they're evil, and the evil waste no time at all. -Shalini Abeysekara in This Blade of Ours

So often traumatized folks wonder and worry about if they are being good people or if they are continuing to harm others as they have been harmed.

But those who are truly evil, toxic and abusive typically don’t waste time worry about this issue.

This doesn’t mean that you won’t cause harm as you learn and grow, as you get triggered, etc. But the fact that you worry and think about it is evidence that you are not bad.

Accept the pain, but do not accept that you deserved it. -Brandon Sanderson

This is the duality at the heart of healing. We must accept the pain and how we’ve adapted to it in our lives. It is only once we truly accept where we are at that we will have the ability to change.

But just because it’s our responsibility to accept this pain is in no way an indictment that we deserved the wound. I do not believe you ever deserved this wounding.

In every breath, hope abides. – -Jay Kristoff in Godsgrave

As long there is breath in my lungs, there is hope that things can change, improve, grow and heal.-

Concepts and definitions can be extremely useful, but they can also become barriers rather than bridges. Dolores Mosquera in Trauma-Informed Relational Approach for Dissociative Parts

Again, words matter, but they are also limited by our human understanding and shaped by the systems in which they are developed. I help people obtain diagnoses they need to access care, this is important.

But it is also a way of creating a barrier or hoops for people to jump through in order to get that care, and that is something that is problematic about our system. by @traumatherapysd

Where and how you get trained in EMDR matters.

With Precision EMDR you’ll get a slower pace, a mentor relationship with your facilitator and the ability to select a facilitator based on their areas of expertise.

We are committed to training you to have a way of approaching your complex clients from day one. And we run the training with awareness and sensitivity to the reality that you might have a complex history too.

If that sounds like a good fit for you, then sign up now for our Spring 2027 training to get early bird rates. Link in bio.

Training offered by:
Precision EMDR Academy
www.PrecisionEMDR.com by @traumatherapysd

You may not always see her in session, but Sadie is always there lending her therapy dog skills to our work. 😉💜🐾 by @traumatherapysd

“You’ve always been strong…Perhaps too strong.” But that wasn’t true. She wasn’t strong so much as capable of numbing herself to the worst and watching every blow land with wry fatalism. She’d buried parts of herself that hurt and raged, turning wary and self-contained. It had worked for years. – Monster of Mine by Shalini Abeysekara

What is strength and what is simply survival?

When do we learn that numbing ourselves helps us get through, so other believe we are strong?

Where do we learn to bury those parts of ourselves that feel deeply?

These are all questions that are part of the work with complex trauma. So often what others see and praise as strong is simply a person trying desperately to survive. This is an adaptation to traumatic circumstances.

And these survival strategies often have an expiration date, when suddenly the person no longer feels able to do what they’ve done to survive. This is often when people come into therapy, have a crisis, etc.

Learning to help people identify where they learned these strategies, how to disentangle these adaptations from their sense of self, and to live more fully in the present is such a skill.

My preferred method of doing this work is EMDR therapy. If you’re interested in learning about how to do this important work with clients with really complex histories then you should join the next Precision EMDR Academy’s Basic Training.

#CPTSD #EMDRTraining #TraumaTherapy by @traumatherapysd

by @traumatherapysd

Here are some quotes from Dr. Jennifer Mullan’s Decolonizing Therapy that move me speak to my own hopes for this journey I’ve embarked on:

Many of us began this career path with a deep calling to help others, but what we really needed was to help ourselves...to locate the root of our need to give and help and triage almost everyone everywhere despite ourselves.

As we slowly awaken, undo, and decolonize our mental and emotional behavioral care systems, may we allow for room to not know and to learn from the people we serve.

May we realize how illness is written on our bodies and the bodies of our therapy participants-through relationships, rituals, and their stories.

May we realize that this process is full of dichotomies and paradoxes. A personal, yet collective journey; a lonely, yet supported journey; a political and healing journey; an abolishing and merging journey; and a practical and scientific, yet ancestral and fluid healing journey.

May we honor that the very nature of the decolonial process is one that seeks to change how we see the world, while living within the world.

May we democratize medical knowledge, in particular, the often-exclusive forms of “professionalized” therapeutic knowledge, and recog nize that the mental health industrial complex (MHIC) does not have a monopoly on mental and emotional wellness.

Transformation has to be politicized, viewed ecologically, and pursued interdependently. by @traumatherapysd

The answer is always dogs! by @traumatherapysd

Suicide is a solution sought to what is experienced as unendurable pain and is absolutely a mental health issue, and an epidemic in the US.
AND there are a lot of things that are not about mental health that need to be part of our discussion of suicide prevention.
One of the things that makes pain more endurable is connection and support, it’s about community.
Only in a society in which we truly love and value all of our members and ensure that they have the resources and supports that they need can we greatly reduce suicide.
Speaking to this I want to highlight some of the ways we can work to prevent suicide that are outside the realm of therapy, medication, or other types of mental health treatment.
Suicide prevention is:
• Making healthcare more accessible & affordable
• Gender affirming medical care
• Making a living wage
• Safe, affordable housing
• Drug & alcohol treatment
• Being believed about your own experience
• Living in a society that values all its members
• Using the name & pronouns of gender diverse people
• Family & faith communities accepting & affirming their LGBTQIA+ members
• Living in a society that doesn’t debate your right to exist
Crisis support:
• National Suicide Hotline 988*
• San Diego Crisis Line 888-724-7240*
• Transgender Lifeline 877-565-8860
• Trevor Project 866-488-7386*
*calling may result in police involvement

#SuicidePrevention #SuicidePreventionMonth #NationalSuicidePrevention #YouAreNotAlone by @traumatherapysd

am forever amazed by this duality of the human experience.

I am confronted by this duality every time I do EMDR reprocessing with a client.

In particular, the resilience of clients with structural dissociation (DID/OSDD) never cease to amaze me. Their brains have done something so sophisticated and tough to survive, and yet when we work together there is often a sense of being incredibly fragile. They are both and it is important to remember this during the work.

Are you interested in learning to utilize EMDR therapy with folks who have Dissociative Identity Disorder?

I’ve created a foundational introduction to doing this very important and nuanced work.

To learn more click this QR code or follow the link in my bio.

#DissociationTraining #EMDRTherapist #EMDRTherapy by @traumatherapysd