Therapy, explained from scratch

What that
therapy word
means

Someone said polyvagal, or EMDR, or parts, and you nodded. Maybe a therapist; maybe a podcast. Here is what they were talking about, with nothing assumed.

Five so far

Pick the word you heard.

One idea per page. Big pictures, few words, and nothing you have to know first.

Janina Fisher

TIST

The thing you do to cope is trying to help

For when the ways you cope (cutting, drinking, starving, wanting to die) are the things doing you harm. Why each one is a part of you that learned to survive, and what to say to it.

Read it

Richard Schwartz

IFS

There are no bad parts

A therapy for when part of you keeps doing what the rest of you hates. The mind as a family of parts, the three jobs they take, and the Self underneath them.

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Francine Shapiro

EMDR

Some memories never turn into the past

Trauma therapy, for when something terrible keeps coming back as if it were now. Why that happens, what a session looks like, and whether the eye movements matter.

Read it

David Grand

Brainspotting

Where you look affects how you feel

For trauma, and for whatever you cannot get past. Found by accident in 2003, and built on where your eyes happen to be pointing.

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Deb Dana

Polyvagal theory

Your body decides before you do

A way to understand why you feel calm, anxious or shut down, what moves you back, and why none of it is your fault.

Read it

Who made this

Rian van der Merwe, who is married to a therapist, currently in therapy himself, and really needs to understand how things work. Every page quotes the person who had the idea, and ends with sources and evidence.