Transcription
[Music] Hi and welcome to another video from the Sea Clinic. My name is Dr. Mike Lloyd and I'm the director of the clinic.
In the video today, we're going to be looking at boundaries in the work with people with complex dissociative conditions such as OSTD and DID. This is a very common problem for people to experience because often when they want to try and engage in certain behaviors or have certain conversations, they can be interruptions and influences that get in the way. And sometimes some of the behaviors that interrupt people with those conditions really are problematic for them in everyday life.
So an example could be somebody with DID. They're wanting to get something done, something fairly simple, and a behavior emerges through a part through a dissociated internal part that kind of breaches the boundaries of what would be considered to be acceptable or unacceptable practice in everyday life. So it could be that a person is going shopping and they accidentally bump into somebody and they intend to apologize but actually what happens is a park comes through and starts being aggressive or swearing or confrontational or something like that or runs out of the shop carrying all the shopping and and hasn't paid for it and therefore you know the person can get into trouble. So there can be lots of things said and lots of things done that could be considered to be what would we might say is breaches of the boundaries.
So if we think about what sort of behaviors in everyday life that a person or a system might engage in that would be considered acceptable, a boundary violation could be something that becomes unacceptable in terms of those behaviors. So we tend to think about boundaries as being agreed norms of conduct. So ways of going about doing things that are considered to be okay, reasonable, you know, and have been agreed to be to be fair enough. So people have boundaries in terms of their working practices with other people, with their friendships, with their relationships and you know there are sort of please do these things and please do not do those things and absolutely do not do those things are all part of our ways of agreeing and collaborating with boundaries.
So in the outside world this is kind of hard enough to do to get everybody to agree with what is acceptable practice like all starting to work on time, finishing to work on time, things like that. And in therapy, there are loads and loads of boundaries that take place and are set between the patient and the therapist that make it safe and make it a useful environment for both to work in. And when these boundaries are broken, it can cause enormous amounts of stress, grief, and you know, huge conflicts can occur as boundaries sort of get broken and and we can often not really understand why these things have happened. So some people break boundaries and you know, you get no explanation for it. And the same is true for OSTD and DID.
So internal parts can breach the boundaries that a person might set as being sort of like the acceptable code of conduct. And there's no sort of insight or or reflection or explanation or apology about those boundaries being done. There's kind of ghosting and silence. All that can happen. And then these boundaries go over and over and over again. um you know significant ones take place about you know let's say not taking alcohol not doing drugs not having you know relationships outside of relationships you know whatever it might be but sometimes these boundary violations are huge and massively difficult for a person to deal with and understanding what's gone on why is always very problematic.
So the point of this video really is to try and understand what's going on underneath all of these boundary violations because the the number of reasons for why they take place could be infinite. But at their core is this understanding that the reason that a person might have ended up as a as an individual with DID or OSD or or or they are part of a system with OSD or DID is likely as a result of complex trauma which is nearly always about some form of boundary violation. So it's either some sort of abusive, neglectful or very very unpleasant behaviors coming from caregivers, from parents, uh friends, siblings, um you know, adults in the environment, whatever it might be that has caused the OSD and DID to be there in the first place is likely to be a complex interweaving of many many different boundary violations.
So those dissociative parts have almost grown or emerged or or been created in order to try and overcome the harm caused by these boundary violations which means at their heart these boundary violations are present within the structure and form of the dissociative parts. So therefore it stands to reason that their behaviors might be a bit disjointed or disconnected from the boundaries and the acceptable code of conduct of the present because there was no degree of acceptable or or in the past it was all unacceptable. It was all wrong. It was all unjustified. So therefore boundary violations are almost the soil within which the plant has grown. So it stands to reason that the plant grows in a slightly kind of wonky and disjointed way in terms of boundaries.
The key then is to try and overcome this by understanding and developing these collaborative relationships with the parts. To help them understand that the place that they came from, that created them, that they emerged from is a very different place from where they are in the present day. And to help them gradually and cautiously and empathically start agreeing on what would be considered to be better boundary um codes of conduct for the entire system and everyone who's working within that system.
This is a very difficult process and again as with all many things within our clinic we always recommend that therapy is the the place within which this is done but we do understand that not everyone has access to therapy but it's to try not to be angry or supercritical when these boundary violations are taking place when the parts are doing things or saying things that you simply don't want them to do that kind of breach those standards breach those boundaries is instead of being angry and critical towards them is to try and take that step back and be reflective and understanding about where it was that they came from.
So in a way we could look at say you know taking on a rescue dog as an example for this is that if you go and get a rescue dog who's come from a very very difficult place a very abusive place let's say and that dog barks and barks and bites and chews things and is destructive in the environment there's no point being angry about that dog because it came from a place where it learned those behaviors in the first place. So we can kind of view dissociative parts that are boundary violators in the same way. They're not doing it to be cruel or malicious or unkind. They simply emerged and groaned from an environment where that was commonplace where the unacceptable was acceptable to those people who caused it in the first place.
So being empathic and being patient and being forgiving and being calm towards those parts as we would do with that dog who's come from the horrendous place is all about trying to sort of build that collaboration and start developing new boundaries and developing new rules that can be rewarded and can have positive con consequences for all parts when those boundaries are met and respected because respect is really the key to a lot of this. parts came from a place where the the the main person was not being respected. The child often was not being respected. So the parts really don't have much of an understanding about what is good behavior because they were grown from a place of bad behavior. So taking that step back really trying to develop that process is is the way that we start doing this clinically.
I hope that's been a a helpful insight just to really gain a bit of understanding as to why boundaries can be sort of broken and breached so many times over and over again. Often it's because we haven't yet form the foundations of this deeper understanding and empathic relationships towards those parts.
So please leave some comments uh about what you think about the video and do all the likes, subscribing, sharing, all the usual kind of things. Uh it's really great reading all of those and uh sort of knowing how much work this is is is sort of going out there and and what it's being used for. So thank you very much for watching. Uh thank you very much for sharing the videos and talking about that in the comment section. And between now and the next video, as always, please do take great care.