ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In this episode, Wendy is joined by Sherry Van Dyke, psychotherapist, EMDR clinician and consultant, and author of the DBT Workbook for CPTSD, who has spent over 22 years working with adults navigating the long-term consequences of trauma, and has trained clinicians in DBT and EMDR across the world.
The episode opens with something genuinely clarifying: a plain-language explanation of the difference between PTSD and complex PTSD, including why a CPTSD diagnosis can be so hard to obtain in some countries, and why people are so often misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder or bipolar disorder when the real picture is developmental trauma. If you or someone you care about has ever felt that a diagnosis didn't quite fit, this section alone is worth listening to.
From there, the conversation builds into one of the most thorough and accessible explanations of dialectical behaviour therapy and why it is so well suited to complex trauma. Sherry describes DBT as CBT on steroids, and unpacks all four of its modules, core mindfulness, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness and emotion regulation, explaining not just what each one does but how they work together for someone whose nervous system has been primed by years of unsafe or unpredictable experiences.
There is a particularly valuable section on dissociation, a topic that Sherry argues Western medicine has largely dissociated from itself. She covers the difference between depersonalisation and derealisation, explains why dissociation is a survival mechanism rather than a disorder, and describes the practical, collaborative tools she uses to help clients recognise their early warning signs and find their way back to the present moment.
The episode also covers the tri-phasic model of complex trauma treatment, the three stages of safety and stabilisation, trauma processing, and integrated functioning, and how DBT weaves through all of them, including the assertiveness and boundary-setting work that often becomes possible only after the deeper processing is done.
Sherry's book, the DBT Workbook for CPTSD, is designed for both clients and clinicians, and is available on Amazon and via New Harbinger Publications.
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