About the Book
This beautifully illustrated picture book and guidebook set offers a broad introduction to childhood trauma and its legacies, with a focus on dissociation and DID. Written with clinical accuracy, warmth and accessibility to individuals of all ages and backgrounds, it provides a non-threatening understanding of dissociation and DID that will empower survivors and educate the friends, family and professionals who want or need to learn more about the condition.
The set includes:
Our House: Making Sense of Dissociative Identity Disorder, a simple and accessible picture book that uses the metaphor of a house to explain how and why DID can develop. Additional guidance accompanies the story, explaining the metaphor in depth, offering advice regarding dissociative disorders, and signposting further help for both individuals and professionals.
Understanding Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Guidebook for Survivors and Practitioners, provides practical exercises and opportunities for reflective discussion that will expand and deepen the understanding, application and usefulness of the picture book. This resource is accompanied by downloadable resources.
This is an invaluable resource for survivors of trauma and for those who support them, counsellors, psychologists, social care workers and other professionals, as well as family and friends.
Table of Contents:
Understanding Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Guidebook for Survivors and Practitioners
Our House: Making Sense of Dissociative Identity Disorder
About the Author :
Lindsay Schofield is a Consultant Psychotherapist with a private practice in Surrey, England. She enjoys working with individuals and couples, helping them with a wide range of emotional and mental health challenges. Lindsay specialises in working with trauma and dissociation, working with couples, and providing supervision to other practitioners. She has a particular interest in promoting and supporting professional self-care and has developed material on Compassion Fatigue – Sustaining Self. She also writes and delivers her own workshops in the UK and internationally.
Lindsay is accredited with the BABCP, the BACP (Senior), the ACC, the NCS (Senior/Supervisor) and the NCP (Senior). In her spare time, she enjoys a menagerie of animals and nature.
Cassie Herschel-Shorland is a freelance designer, illustrator, and artist. She works predominantly on increasing access to the diverse history of places, objects, and people’s associated stories. As an active tutor Cassie is also passionate about supporting mental health and wellbeing through creative workshops often in museums, galleries, or libraries; encouraging people to explore and illustrate their own stories.
Cassie has BA(Hons) in 3D design, post graduate certificate in illustration and a Master of Arts in historical illustration. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
www.cassiehs.com
Review :
Praise for Understanding Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Guidebook for Survivors and Practitioners:
Lindsay’s wealth of experience, understanding and knowledge in this field - coupled with her gift and passion for educating others - makes this a book not to be missed by anyone with an interest in trauma and DID. Therapists embarking on work with clients in this field will find this a useful tool to add to their kit. Those with DID, along with their partners and friends will find this both reassuring, hopeful and wonderfully informative.
Jennifer and Parts
An encyclopaedic gift to clinicians; an empowering tribute to survivors and a generous guidebook to all those who love and support them. This essential guide offers a rich tapestry of information, traversing trauma’s challenging landscape in a narrative that is relational, accessible, and expansive. It is instructive, illuminatory, and exploratory, a testament to humankind’s capacity for courage and resilience in the face of depravity and heinousness. We applaud the author in her phenomenal achievement of disentangling the complex web of dissociative disorders and thank her for her dedication to the field.
Michele and Parts
Well done to Lindsay Schofield for providing such a thoughtful, rigorous overview of key aspects of diagnosis, treatment and everyday life and aspirations. It provides a substantial companionship to the Picture Book but is also valid in its own right. Her tone is respectful and deshaming and helpful for survivors, survivor-professionals and clinical teams.
Dr Valerie Sinason, Poet, writer and retired child psychotherapist and adult psychoanalyst. Founder Patron of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies and President of the Institute for Psychotherapy and Disability; 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award ISSTD
This guidebook around DID and its companion picture book provide a rare insightful and yet accessible set of resources. They should go a long way towards demystifying DID, addressing some of the common misconceptions, and offering hope and support to those impacted, as well as those walking alongside them.
Dr Cathy Kezelman AM, President Blue Knot Foundation – National Centre of Excellence for Complex Trauma; lived experience survivor
Wow, this book is awesome! Very impressive. Lindsay has condensed the current knowledge in this field into a comprehensive and clear guide for people who are seeking to heal from trauma of all kinds. What a phenomenal resource!
Dr Lynette Danylchuk, Past President ISSTD, 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award ISSTD
This wonderful book presents trauma science in a thorough and thoughtful way that is accessible to survivors, practitioners and allies. Lindsay imbues this resource with clinical wisdom and compassion that will empower survivors to understand complex trauma and dissociation, and guide both survivors and practitioners towards the goals of wellbeing and safety.
Dr Michael Salter, Scientia Associate Professor of Criminology, Postgraduate Coordinator UNSW Australia
This is a rich, practical, comprehensive and succinct resource gem that combines readable and understandable guidance for clinicians, clients, and their supporters about child & adult dissociation! It is a must read for all who come in contact with those with dissociation!
Frances S. Waters, Author of Healing the Fractured Child: Diagnosis and Treatment of Youth with Dissociation, past president of ISSTD, & Chair of ISSTD Faculty Director of Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy, Training
This book, beautifully written by Lindsay Schofield and beautifully illustrated by Cassie Herschel-Shorland, is for people with dissociative disorders, especially DID, and those who are aiming to help and support them. It is easy to read and yet provides in-depth and well-informed information and signposting to more technical material. It won’t tell you how to do therapy if you are a therapist, but it will set you on the path. I really like the way it addresses everyone, therapists and clients and families and friends alike, as people interacting with DID and related problems.
The book provides a nice introduction to trauma, its effects and hope for healing, as well as how it leads to dissociation in varying degrees. It provides an overview of assessment, conditions and treatment models. A chapter for survivors is written in accessible language and includes a checklist to use when seeking help from professionals, along with handling flashbacks and grounding. A chapter for practitioners gives advice on tools and self-care. The guidebook moves on to reflect and comment on the sister book "Our House: Making Sense of Dissociative Disorder", showing survivors how to use the book and offering more resources.
This book will make a difference in our field, making the mysterious accessible for everyone.
Dr Fiona Kennedy, Director, GreenWood Mentors Ltd. BA (Hons) M Clin Psych D Clin CPsychol AFBPS CPsychol, Fellow BABCP
Praise for Our House: Making Sense of Dissociative Identity Disorder:
This book takes a complex condition and way of being and it explains it in a highly effective, yet simple, visual way. Those who are coming to terms with their own DID, or trying to explain it to others, will find this book easy to read and understand whilst providing clear explanations.
Francesca & Parts
This book is great! It tells people about trauma and DID and how it helps us. The pictures stop it being too scary.
Reilly & Molly & Parts
The field of trauma and dissociation has been waiting for this book! Pictures reach deep into us in a way that words rarely do. They bypass hurdles and filters and allow a connection of the deepest level. Here we also have words that help linked to the art in a combination that helps children, adults and families and all the professionals that work with them.
Dr Valerie Sinason is a poet, writer and retired child psychotherapist and adult psychoanalyst. She is Founder Patron of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies and President of the Institute for Psychotherapy and Disability. 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award ISSTD
I am delighted to welcome such an accessible resource to help demystify the frequently denied and sensationalised condition of DID. The pictures and simple text of the everyday can be readily understood and will go a long way to helping those struggling with a DID diagnosis or its effects, and those supporting them.
Dr Cathy Kezelman AM, President Blue Knot Foundation – National Centre of Excellence for Complex Trauma; lived experience survivor.
This is a wonderful book, and a great contribution to this field. The illustrations do an extraordinary job of conveying the reality of dissociation, how it's created to help the child survive, and how problematic it can be. Developed in picture book format, I would recommend it for all ages. It's profoundly helpful to be able to conceptualize something challenging and complex in such an easily understood manner. The additional Guidebook is an excellent compilation of knowledge and resources for survivors, their families, and professionals.
Dr Lynette Danylchuk, Past President ISSTD, 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award ISSTD
This is a lovely book that is two-fold: a concise understanding of the dynamics of dissociation and a lovely pictorial story of how a child is impacted by trauma. It helps to make what is often confusing for the child and those around the child comprehensible!
Frances S Waters, Author of Healing the Fractured Child: Diagnosis and Treatment of Youth with Dissociation, past president of ISSTD, & Chair of ISSTD Faculty Director of Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy, Training
This book is a wonderful resource for survivors, their allies, professional and members of the public. With moving pictures and thoughtful text, this book brings to life the inner world of people with DID.
Dr Michael Salter, Scientia Associate Professor of Criminology, Postgraduate Coordinator UNSW Australia
This little and beautifully illustrated book is so accessible for individuals of all ages who want to know about DID and related conditions. That is important because DID usually feels so complicated, mysterious, and strange. Also, because people who have DID often experience themselves in child self-states or as having other "not me" child self-states in their body/mind. It is good when the person with DID can understand information from the perspective of all of their self-states, not just one.
Built around the metaphor of a house, the book takes us through how DID develops in response to bad things happening, which a person may or may not remember. The illustrations are wonderful and communicate on an emotional level as well as aiding understanding. They also make difficult messages easier to hear.
I recommend this book for people with DID or OSDD (Other Specified Dissociative Disorder) who want a compassionate understanding of themselves. Also recommended for family, friends, and for therapists who want to help their clients.
Dr Fiona Kennedy, Director, GreenWood Mentors Ltd., BA (Hons) M Clin Psych D Clin CPsychol AFBPS CPsychol, Fellow BABCP
The concept of a picture book and accompanying guidebook is novel in the treatment of DID, providing a road map that is easy to navigate and a landscape that is well defined and refreshingly clear. Both books empower survivors, inform and reassure practitioners, whist gently supporting loved ones. The books are meteoric in their achievement, a timely and imperative gift to the field of complex trauma and worthy of prime space in every therapy room.
Michele Leslie Jowett, ESTD Newsletter, December 2021
